The long road hurried to nowhere and had no end. - Peter S. Beagle

Schmendrick stepped out into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as did so he felt his immortality fall from him like an armour, or like a shroud.

Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne.

Girls like poems better than dead dragons and magic swords,