"Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

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

"Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. "
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"'I am no king, and I am no lord,
And I am no soldier at-arms,' said he.
'I'm none but a harper, and a very poor harper,
That am come hither to wed with ye.'

'If you were a lord, you should be my lord,
And the same if you were a thief,' said she.
'And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper,
For it makes no matter to me, to me,
For it makes no matter to me.'

'But what if it prove that I am no harper?
That I lied for your love most monstrously?'
'Why, then I'll teach you to play and sing,
For I dearly love a good harp,' said she."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"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."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
— Peter S. Beagle

"The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. 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 (The Last Unicorn)

"It's a very rare person who is taken for what he truly is.

—Schmendrick the Magician"
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"But I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished. "
— Peter S. Beagle

"When I was alive, I believed - as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.
(...)
You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that - then any time at all will be the right time for you."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Of all unicorns, she is the only one who knows what regret is - and love."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"My lady... I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them is has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he has done something wicked. 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 long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story... Heroes... Heroes know about order, and happy endings -- heroes know that some things are better than others... You were the one who taught me... I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,
Sooner than I will live with you.
Fish will come walking out of the sea,
Sooner than you will come back to me."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"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. "
— Peter S. Beagle

"Molly: No, it can't be. Can it be? Where have you been? Where have you been? Damn you! Where have you been?

Schmendrick: Don't you talk to her that way!

Unicorn: I'm here now.

Molly: And where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me now, when I am this! [Weeps]

Schmendrick: Can you really see her? Do you know what she is?

Molly: If you had been waiting to see a unicorn, as long as I have...

Schmendrick: She's the last unicorn in the world.

Molly: It would be the last unicorn that came to Molly Grue. It's all right, I forgive you."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"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 (The Last Unicorn)

"Molly Grue: But what if there isn't a happy ending?

Schmendrick: There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.

Molly Grue: Schmendrick, let her stay the way she is. Let her be...

Schmendrick: That's not in the story. Lir know that, and so does she.

Molly Grue: You don't care! You don't care what happens to her or to the others, just so you're a real magician at last. You don't care--

Schmendrick: Well I wish I didn't care! I wish to God I didn't care about anything but my magic! But I do! I do."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"The Cat: No cat out of its first fur was ever deceived by appearances, unlike human beings, who seem to enjoy it."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Schmendrick: Don't cry. If you have become human enough to cry, then all the magic in the world cannot change you back."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks it is beautiful."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"There is no immortality but a tree's love."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

--Introduction to the Lord of the Rings"
— Peter S. Beagle (The Tolkien Reader)

"Amalthea: I'm no unicorn, no magical creature. I'm a woman, and I love you, Lir. Don't let him change me! Lir, I will not love you when I'm a unicorn.
Prince Lir: Amalthea, don't...
Schmendrick: Then let the quest end here! I don't think I could change you back, even if you wished it. Marry the prince, and live happily ever after.
Amalthea: Yes, that is my wish.
Prince Lir: No. My lady, I am a hero. Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"My lady," he said, "I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them, it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. 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 long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous."
— Peter S. Beagle (A Fine and Private Place)

"The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Whatever can die is beautiful--"
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"If a man loved me, I would have talked myself into loving him, and I would have loved him very deeply after a while."
— Peter S. Beagle (A Fine and Private Place)

"Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces, to call you once by your name."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

" Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold; it spilled through his fingers and toes, welled up equally in his eyes and his hair and the hollows of his shoulders. There was too much to hold — too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.
"
— Peter S. Beagle

"But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, "alright sucker, now what?"
— Peter S. Beagle

"I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art--not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"You don't have to believe in Hell. all you need is to hear someone who really does, who believes in it this minute, today, the way people believe in 1685 -- all you have to do is see his face, his voice when he says the word... and than you know that anyone who can imagine Hell has the power to make it real for other people."
— Peter S. Beagle (Tamsin)

"Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

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

"Molly Grue: What is the use of wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?

Schmendrick the Magician: That is what heroes are for."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it."
— Peter S. Beagle (A Fine and Private Place)

"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 Last Unicorn)

"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 (Tamsin)

"I am a black stone, the size of a kitchen stove. They wash me in the stream every summer and sing over me. I am skulls and cocks, spring rain and the blood of the bull. Virgins lie with strangers in my name, the young priests throw pieces of themselves at my stone feet. I am white corn, and the wind in the corn, and the earth whereof the corn stands up, and the blind worms rolled in an oozy ball of love at the corn's roots. I am rut and flood and honeybees."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Folk of the Air)

"It would be the last unicorn that came to Molly Grue. It's all right, I forgive you."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"The impulse is being called reactionary now, but lovers of Middle-earth want to go there. I would myself, like a shot. For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien’s considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers—thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams."
— Peter S. Beagle

" Haggard, I would not be you for all the world. You have let your doom in by the front door, but it will not depart that way! Farewell, poor Haggard! "
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Hell of an ornithologist you'd make."
— Peter S. Beagle

"No," he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice... whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"“When I was alive, I believed—as you do—that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls…

"The important thing is for you to understand that it doesn’t matter whether the clock strikes ten next, or seven, or fifteen o’clock. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that—then any time at all will be the right time for you.”"
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)