Peter S. Beagle

"What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. "Always, always," it sighed, "faithful beyond any man's deserving. I will keep the color of your eyes when no other in the world remembers your name. There is no immortality but a tree's love.

I’ll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I’ll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I’ll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.

The stars were going out now, one by one, dropping like pennies behind the television aerials and the skylights and the washing strung between the chimneys. The sky was still dark - a sated, navy-blue woman - but the grass was jittery with the expectation of dawn.

"I've never really undestood," the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up," what you dream of doing with me, once you've caught me."
The man leaped again, and she slipped away from him like rain. "I don't think you know yourself," she said.

The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.

She heard hearts bounce, tears brewing, and breath going backward, but nobody said a word. By the sorrow and loss and sweetness in their faces she knew that they recognized her, and she accepted their hunger as her homage. She thought of the hunter's great-grandmother, and wondered what it must be like to grow old, and to cry.

I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.

"Then what is magic for?" Prince Lír demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling.

Schmedrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for."

"I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters."

...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.

...she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.

My father hates cats. He says that there is no such thing as a cat — it is just a shape that all manner of imps, hobs and devilkins like to put on, to gain easy entrance into the homes of men.

I am a king's daughter,
And if I cared to care,
The moon that has no mistress
Would flutter in my hair.
No one dares to cherish
What I choose to crave.
Never have I hungered,
For that I did not have
I am a kings daughter,
And I grow old within
The prison of my person,
The shackles of my skin.
And I would run away
And beg from door to door,
Just to see your shadow
Once, and never more.

The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror.

"Schmendrick smiled then. "I'm no man," he said. "I'm a magician with no magic, and that's no one at all.