Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn (1968)

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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
Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, "I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.

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

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

Peter S. Beagle
My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.

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

Peter S. Beagle
Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.

Peter S. Beagle
The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

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

Peter S. Beagle
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.

Peter S. Beagle
Farewell,' she said. 'I hope you hear many more songs' - which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.

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

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

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

Peter S. Beagle
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!

Peter S. Beagle