Peter S. Beagle Quotes (1939-)

“Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy — save one. And I thank you for that part, too. Farewell good magician. I will try to go home now.”

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

“To the memory of Dr. Olfert Dapper, who saw a wild unicorn in the Maine woods in 1673, and for Robert Nathan, who has seen one or two in Los Angeles.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In yesterday's newspaper I read an account of the action you took at My Lai, protecting the Vietnamese villagers from American troops. I cried. I'm near tears again, writing this. I'm not a Vietnam veteran. I've never served in the Armed Forces, I've never been to Vietnam. But I am an American Jew who grew up in the wake of the Holocaust, studying history as an endless parade of massacres of the innocent... Usually the daily paper proves to me, over and over, that human beings would literally rather hurt each other than eat. I don't like feeling like this, but I think I always have. But every now and then. Every now and then. I collect these now-and-thens inside myself whenever and wherever I come across them. They may make me cry by day, but I cling to them at night, to keep myself warm remembering that- for all the horrors of history- human beings are capable of kindness, courage, love, self-sacrifice and passionate sympathy. It's terribly easy to forget that, and I usually do. You have reminded me.”