Peter S. Beagle Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships.

Peter S. Beagle
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

Peter S. Beagle
As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.

Peter S. Beagle
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.

Peter S. Beagle
I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?

Peter S. Beagle
They know these mornings well and love them desperately because they cannot last - these people who know that nothing lasts.

Peter S. Beagle
I am afraid! It is not starving I fear, or talking to people, or even being alone. But I cannot bear to be useless and ineffectual. There must be some meaning to me, if not to my life; there must surely be some purpose that has my name written on it. If this is not so, if I am deceiving myself about this too, then why should I want to become real? What reason have I to live anywhere?

Peter S. Beagle
There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous.

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.

Peter S. Beagle
Don't look back, and don't run. You must never run from anything immortal; it attracts their attention.

Peter S. Beagle
Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.

Peter S. Beagle
No meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.

Peter S. Beagle
There is an old saying that there is no country as unhappy as one that need heroes.

Peter S. Beagle
All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry. By being ourselves, squirrel and raven, we fulfill the first requirement, you in flight and I in my tree. But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain—this is nothing beside a life without poetry.

Peter S. Beagle
This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he's none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind's right he has his uses. Never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka's mystery even to the Pooka.

Peter S. Beagle
- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

Peter S. Beagle
How's the Angel of Death supposed to do his job with clipped wings?

Peter S. Beagle
The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.

Peter S. Beagle
"How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns [...] But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else — what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?"

Peter S. Beagle
Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.

Peter S. Beagle
The magician was studying her face with his green eyes. "Your face is wet," he said worriedly. "I hope that's spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world — oh, it must be spray. Come with me. It had better be spray.

Peter S. Beagle
Take me with you. For laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.

Peter S. Beagle
You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, 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.

Peter S. Beagle
Your true task has just begun, and you may not know in your life if you have succeeded in it, but only if you fail.

Peter S. Beagle
I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.

Peter S. Beagle
The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.

Peter S. Beagle
I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?

Peter S. Beagle
We do lead a good life here, or if we don't, I don't know anything about it. I sometimes think that a little fear, a little hunger, might be good for us — sharpen our souls, so to speak.

Peter S. Beagle
I was one of the haves, and one of the secrets of being a have is not wasting your time on empathy.

Peter S. Beagle
The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it.

Peter S. Beagle