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"I know everything, you see,' the old voice wheedled. 'The beginning, the present, the end. Everything. You now, you see the past and the present, like other low creatures: no higher faculties than memory and perception. But dragons, my boy, have a whole different kind of mind.' He stretched his mouth in a kind of smile, no trace of pleasure in it. 'We are from the mountaintop: all time, all space. We see in one instant the passionate vision and the blowout."
"They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all."
"When I was a child I truly loved:Unthinking love as calm and deepAs the North Sea. But I have lived,And now I do not sleep."
"What do you call the Hrothgar-wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?"
"I had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. it's all a hero asks for."
"All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits."
"So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age."
"It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine."
"Go ahead, scoff, he said, petulant. Except in the life of a hero, the whole world's meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile."