Speaking of livers,' the unicorn said. 'Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect … - Peter S. Beagle

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

He had foreseen every such change in his fortune, ignored it always, and called the refusal innocence.

Who has choices need not choose.
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose — What is gone is gone.

We give them different names, those nights lit only by fire and the moon, depending on the country and the calendar, but we know what they are. They call up the world that was before the Lord came down among us; the world where good and evil were not so certain, so fixed as they are today, where the known and the unheard-of could mingle as they chose...where truth had its doubts, do you see?
(By Moonlight)