299 Quotes by Peter S. Beagle

Any woman can weep without tears,” she answered over her shoulder, “and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that’s riddle enough.

He is a true hero,” she said, “a dragonslayer, a giantkiller, 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.

He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were pale as scars.

The long road hurried to nowhere and had no end.

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

Whatever can die is beautiful – more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?

The king is always watching her out of his pale eyes, wondering what she is, and the king’s son wounds himself with loving her and wonders who she is. And every day she searches the sea and the sky, the castle and the courtyard, the keep and the king’s face, for something she cannot always remember. What is it, what is it that she is seeking in this strange place? She knew a moment ago, but she has forgotten.

She came very close, and looking into my eyes, she said, “My Jenny,” and then she bent her head and kissed me – here, on the left-hand corner of my mouth. And nobody knows better than I that I couldn’t have felt anything, because Tamsin was a ghost – but nobody but me knows what I felt. And I’ll always know.

Wisdom is finding joy in bewilderment.