Peter S Beagle Quotes

“song of elli (old age)

"What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on,
What is stolen will remain
What is gone is gone...
What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand -
What is gone is gone...
Here is there, and high is low;
All may be undone.
What is true, no two men know -
What is gone is gone...
Who has choices need not choose.
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose -
What is gone is gone.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“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.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“But the important thing is for you to understand that it doesn't matter whether the clock strikes ten next, or fifteen o'clock. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you can understand that -- then any time at all will be the right time for you.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“All right, all right for you, you pretentious kneecap! How would you like a punch in the eye?”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“As for righting wrongs and fighting for civil liberties, that sort of thing, it wouldn't be so bad ... but then we have to sing those songs about wearing Lincoln green and aiding the oppressed. We don't, Cully, we turn them in for the reward, and those songs are just embarrassing, that's all, and there's the truth of it.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“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.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“At last he said to me, '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.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Nothing's worth any effort in the end," he said to Laura, "because everyone is going to die and there is nothing in the world that will stop them from dying. Nothing lasts. A few things last longer than most people live, but they go too. Hope goes, and desire and wonder and fear and eagerness. Love lasts a few minutes longer, that's all. A minute or a month or an hour. The paper match burns down until it singes your fingers and goes out, and there you are in the dark again, rubbing your two little sticks together. But this is the last time, the last match. There won't be any more light. No more. And no more noise of things moving or of animals lying down. Only our separate, untouching selves, and soon not even that.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place