"Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane."
— Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity!)

"I see colors like you hear jet planes."
— Dave Eggers (How We Are Hungry)

"Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it well be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"I love this mansion, though it is too many windows
...to open halfway each morning
...to close halfway each night."
— Jim Carroll

"GOD: I own you like I own the caves.
THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.
GOD: I made you. I could tame you.
THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now.
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what's happened to me."
— Dave Eggers (How We Are Hungry)

"All I ever wanted was to know what to do."
— Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity!)

"What the fuck does it take to show you motherfuckers, what does it fucking take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me-- Oh do it, do it motherfuckers, do it do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally."
— Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

"There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it."
— Lawrence Durrell

"'If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.'"
— Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory)

"Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you."
— Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory)

"Goddamn sometimes I only want this feeling to stay and last."
— Dave Eggers (How We Are Hungry)

"These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean."
— Lawrence Durrell (Justine)

"'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.'"
— Margery Williams Bianco (The Velveteen Rabbit)

"He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter."
— Margery Williams Bianco (The Velveteen Rabbit)

"Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. "
— 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)

"The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
— 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)

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

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

—Schmendrick the Magician"
— 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.
(...)
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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)