From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She...

Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.

When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see...

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.

The air was motionless, carved, a block of warm copper fitting neatly around the earth, molded while soft to fit every house and every human being on the earth, and now hardened forever so that...

I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at...

Because that world’s gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can’t make that other one real again. It’s like dinosaurs. We can put them back...

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...

Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get.

Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)

There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous.

So you’re an angel, fine, that’s terrific. Now give me back my shadows. (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel)

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. Unfortunately, it seems to be working backward at the...

I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave...

All around Molly there flowed and flowered a light as impossible as snow set afire, while thousands of cloven hooves sang by like cymbals. She stood very still, neither weeping nor laughing, for her joy...

He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he’d burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn’t done it, and wouldn’t had made her his anyway, but...

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?

Man searches constantly for identity, he thought as he trotted along the gravel path. He has no real proof of this existence except for the reaction of other people to that fact. So he listens...

I don’t think I could ever see her closely,” the sentinel replied, “however close she came.” His own voice was hushed and regretful, echoing with lost chances. “She has a newness,” he said. “Everything is...

Only the spider paid no mind when the unicorn called softly to her through the open door. Arachne was busy with a web which looked to her as though the Milky Way had begun to...

The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near… She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was,...

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s...

I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it...

This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one...

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...

I had a good time that night, too,” Michael said, “but I kept thinking, This is forever. This is forever. You will have this good time again and again, a million times over, until it...

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.

You’re in the story with the rest of us now, and you must go with it, whether you will or no.

I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?

Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something...

You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I’m not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in...

Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.

Farrell had seen pure white drunkenness before, but not often enough to recognize it at sight. He knew the thing itself, however–the freight train rattling and lurching comically from hilarity to slobbering sorrow, picking up...

I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not...

You don’t have to believe in Hell. All you need is to hear someone who really does, who believes in it this minute, today, the way people believe in 1685 — all you have to...

I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.

This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he’s none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind’s right he...

But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, “alright sucker, now what?

and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

..no meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.

I’ll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, ‘The soul selects her own society.’ I used...

But what’s left on earth that I haven’t tried?” Prince Lír demanded. “I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before...

I am no king, and I am no lord,And I am no soldier at-arms,” said he.”I’m none but a harper, and a very poor harper,That am come hither to wed with ye.””If you were a...

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers – thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

song of elli (old age)”What is plucked will grow again,What is slain lives on,What is stolen will remainWhat is gone is gone…What is sea-born dies on land,Soft is trod upon.What is given burns the hand...

Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me.

Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.

Sing to me,” she said. “That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me...

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves-for they are a little vain, knowing themselves...

The Blue Jay’s Lullaby—Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets, Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets, Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail’s egg or two— All to be regurgitated for you.Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and...