Quotes by Peter S. Beagle

Its not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, kings change.

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.

The last unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.

Ill tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, The soul selects her own society. I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.

But some, a very come to the gods all on their own They find their way—long and far it is, sometimes—and they wander up to the altars, shy and clumsy and embarrassed and alone, and when they can get the words out, they say, Well. Here I am

The writing of fantasy is best left to those who have nothing better to do, as is indicated by the fairy tales of otherwise gifted writers like Robert Graves and John Ciardi. It isnt so much the difficulty of doing it right, without falling off the tightrope into the cold pits of allegory or mindless whimsy‌—‌the weary thing is that even if you bring it off, all youve done is write a fantasy, and so what? Life is dangerous, and escapism has become a dirty word. I feel the same way, being a child of my own critical times. Id write the other stuff, the real books, if I could. Plenty nitty-gritty. If I could.

After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and that its no less absurd and presumptuous to try on the skin of a bank teller than that of a Bigfoot or a dragon.

My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.

You think this is living? This is eating, nothing else.

So I had something to do, something Id done, someplace to go, and something to look forward to. Thats a reasonable way to live. I enjoyed myself living. I had a good time. How much else can you ask for?A lot more, Laura said softly, if youre greedy. I was greedy once.So was I, but that was a long time ago. Youre greediest when youre born, and after that its downhill all the way. Live to be two hundred and you wouldnt demand anything.

There are no happy endings, he knew, because nothing ends; and if there were any being dispensed, a great many worthier people would be in line for them long before Michael and Laura and himself. But the happiness of the unworthy and the happiness of the so-so is as fragile and self-centered and dear as the happiness of the righteous and the worthy; and the happiness of the living is no less short and desperate and forgotten than the joys of the dead.

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each days madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

I love you, more, I think, than I know, but our kind of love isnt a sword. Its a light. Not a fire. A small light, just bright enough to read love letters by and keep the animals at a growling distance. In time it will go out. All lights go out. So do all fires, if its any comfort. Love me, and look at me, and remember me, as Ill remember you.

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else-what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?

You must remind me, little one. When I... when I lose myself - when I lose her - you must remind me that I am still searching, still waiting... that I have never forgotten her, never turned from all she taught me. I sit in this place... I sit... because a king has to sit, you see... but in my mind, in my poor mind, I am always away with her....

And at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, Yes, but now.

Oh, more people than not have some magic, they just forget about it. Children use it all the time - what do you think jump rope rhymes are, or bouncing ball games, or cats cradles? Where do you think that girl, Aiffe, draws her power? Because she refuses to forget, thats all it is.

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves-for they are a little vain, knowing themselves to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seeking her now and then had called to her in a different tongue; but then, she had no idea of months and years and centuries, or even of seasons. It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.

I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.