A Fine and Private Place Quotes

“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

“I'll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, 'The soul selects her own society.' I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, 'Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“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

“... some things aren't any good unless they're shared. Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“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

“...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, A Fine and Private Place

“You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“Hell of an ornithologist you'd make.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“She lay down on her grave and promptly began to experience difficulty in disposing of her arms. She folded them on her breast, spread them out in the position of a crucifix, kept them to her sides, and finally crossed them on her stomach. She closed her eyes and almost immediately opened them again to look up at Michael.
Now what? Do I just lie here, on top of the blankets, as it were, or can I get back into my coffin?”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“There are people,' he said, 'who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don't do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It's born in you, whether you give or take, and that's the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it. We'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and there you are. Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place." He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough. "Ravens are pretty neurotic birds. We're closer to people than any other bird, and we're bound to them all our lives, but we don't have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“The dead," he had said once, "need nothing from the living, and the living can give nothing to the dead." At twenty-two, it had sounded precocious; at thirty-four, it sounded mature, and this pleased Michael very much. He had liked being mature and reasonable. He disliked ritual and pomposity, routine and false emotion, rhetoric and sweeping gestures. Crowds made him nervous. Pageantry offended him. Essentially a romantic, he had put away the trappings of romance, although he had loved them deeply and never known.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place