Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.

— Peter S. Beagle

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.

— Peter S. Beagle

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

— Peter S. Beagle

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

He is a true hero," she said, "a dragon slayer, a giant killer, a rescuer of maidens, a solver of impossible riddles. He may be the greatest hero of all, because he's a good man as well. They aren't always.

— Peter S. Beagle

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

— Peter S. Beagle

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 have 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

I am a good runner. There are many fasters, but not so many for whom it has been as necessary to learn to become nothing but flight.

— Peter S. Beagle

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 proves 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

I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.

— Peter S. Beagle