“It is very seldom,” the young man said at last, “that dragons ask to do men favours.”“But it is very common,” said the dragon, “for cats to play with mice before they kill them.”

“We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.”

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”

“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”

“The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.”

“When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”