Peter S. Beagle Quotes

"Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."

Outside, the night lay coiled in the street, cobra-cold and scaled with stars.

It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space — that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.

Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;
But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get.

He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that men had changed, and the world with them, because the unicorns were gone.

The unicorn was weary of human beings. Watching her companions as they slept, seeing the shadows of their dreams scurry over their faces, she would feel herself bending under the heaviness of knowing their names. Then she would run until morning to ease the ache: swifter than rain, swift as loss, racing to catch up with the time when she had known nothing at all but the sweetness of being herself.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he'd burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn't done it, and wouldn't had made her his anyway, but you see why he'd have figured it did. Or maybe I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don't love like that anymore. Or maybe it's only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don't know.

But the important thing is for you to understand that it doesn't matter whether the clock strikes ten next, or fifteen o'clock. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you can understand that — then any time at all will be the right time for you.

"Haggard, I would not be you for all the world," he declared. "You have let your doom in by the front door, although it will not depart that way. (...) Farewell, poor Haggard, farewell!"

Farrell had seen pure white drunkenness before, but not often enough to recognize it at sight. He knew the thing itself, however — the freight train rattling and lurching comically from hilarity to slobbering sorrow, picking up speed as it passed through wild, aimless anger straight on into wild sickness; and then, running smoothly and almost silently now, into a dark place of shaking and sweating and crying, and out again with no warning to where a dazzling snowy light made everything very still.

No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy — save one, and I thank you for that, too.

My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in my heart as long as that joy — save one, and I thank you for that, too.

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.