299 Quotes by Peter S. Beagle

A dream that returns so often is like to be a messenger, come to warn you of the future or to remind you of things untimely forgotten.

Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn’t sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.

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.” Before.

And what good is it to me that you’re here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?

I believe myself to be good, he thought, and so I can afford to titillate myself by considering evil, like a child frightening himself with horror stories. I am not a bad man. But I am not a wise one, either, nor understanding. And yet, if I lose this rumpled and comfortable skin that I wear, how will I ever find anything to replace it? I wish I were younger and could grow skin easily.

Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard’s castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts...

It’s not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, kings change.

For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker’s victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.