Peter S. Beagle

Peter Soyer Beagle (born 20 April 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays.

Quotes

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.
- The Unicorn Sonata (1996)

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left.
- "My Last Heroes" in The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (1997)

“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.”
- Salt Wine (2006), reprinted in Rich Horton (ed.) Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007, p. 114

Main article: The Last Unicorn

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

Schmendrick stepped out into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as did so he felt his immortality fall from him like an armour, or like a shroud.

My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in my heart as long as that joy — save one, and I thank you for that, too.

Main article: The Last Unicorn (film)

I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?
- The Unicorn, after overhearing hunters declare her to be the last unicorn.

Don't look back, and don't run. You must never run from anything immortal; it attracts their attention.
- The Unicorn, to Schmendrick, as the harpy Celaeno kills Mommy Fortuna

There are no happy endings because nothing ends.
- Schmendrick, to Molly Grue, reprising the same concept as originally written in "A Fine and Private Place"

All page numbers are from the e-book edition published by Tachyon Publications ISBN 978-1-61696-249-4

Nominated the 2018 World Fantasy and Locus awards for best novella

The universe and Claudio Bianchi had agreed long ago to leave one another alone, and he was grateful, knowing very well how rare such a bargain is, and how rarely kept. And if he had any complaints, he made sure that neither the universe nor he himself ever knew of them.
- p. 28

He gave them no titles; he never saw the point of doing so. If a poem did not tell you immediately what it was about, then, to Claudio Bianchi, it needed more help than a label was likely to provide.
- p. 37

He was only mildly startled that la strega was aware of his relationship with Giovanna: having lived most of his life in or near small southern villages, he would have been far more surprised if she had not.
- p. 98

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