Peter S. Beagle

"When I was very young every grownup was a hero. Its been all downhill since then, and I have only two left."

"The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if wed only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it."

"What am I always telling you, big girl? Never bet on anything except human stupidity."

"“She’s a lady,” I says, “for all she’s a Portygee, and you’re no more a gentleman than that monkey in your mango tree. Money don’t make such as us into gentlemen, Henry Lee. All it does, it makes us rich monkeys. You know that, same as me.”"

"Sometimes, in those nights when the dreams and memories I cannot always tell apart anymore keep me awake, I try to imagine what my life would have been if I had actually carried my plan through. Different, most likely. Shorter, surely."

"We stared at each other in silence for some while, and then I asked him, most politely, “What are you?” “What I need to be,” he answered. “Now this, now that, as necessary. As are we all.”"

"Didn’t listen, did he? They never do. That’s the nature of a Goro. Just as not wanting to know things is the nature of humans."

"So they believe, and they take poorly to having it named nonsense. Which I am very nearly sure it is."

"“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.”"

"He had always detested funerals and avoided them as much as possible. But it’s different, he thought, when it’s your own funeral. You feel it’s one of those occasions that shouldn’t be missed."

"I’ve always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues—you’ve seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces."

"Kings need jugglers, jugglers don’t need kings…"