Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
24 quotes
"From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms."
"Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were such things.""Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?""No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns."
"..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."
"I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.... 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."
"Any woman can weep without tears," she answered over her shoulder, "and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough"
"The last unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone."
"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."
"I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else-what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?"
"And at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, "Yes, but now."
"I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all."
"When we go to the fair in disguise, we never win at archery or at singlestick. We do get some nice compliments on our disguises, but no more than that."
"I will kill you if you set me free,' the eyes said. 'Set me free."
"Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could."
"We don't steal from the rich and give to the poor. We steal from the poor because they can't fight back --most of them-- and the rich take from us because they could wipe us out in a day."
"- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact."
"I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last."
"You're in the story with the rest of us now, and you must go with it, whether you will or no."
"Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name."
"Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."
"You were the one who taught me," he said. "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."
"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."
"I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better."
"Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get."
"I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful."