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198a083
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A Clock is not time; it's numbers and springs. Pay it no mind.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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3d214b2
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Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold; it spilled through his fingers and toes, welled up equa..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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dbcec80
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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 you see why he'd have figured it did. Or maybe I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don't love like that anymore. Or maybe it's only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don't know.
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obsession
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Peter S. Beagle |
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4f3d0ec
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Don't look back and don't run. You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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0781a45
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The last unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.
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the-last-unicorn
peter-beagle
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Peter S. Beagle |
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f0bbf5d
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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 else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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fd892f2
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But what I thought, and what I still think, and always will, is that she saw me. Nobody else has ever seen me -- me, Jenny Gluckstein -- like that. Not my parents, not Julian, not even Meena. Love is one thing -- recognition is something else.
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love
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Peter S. Beagle |
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fd4867a
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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..
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peter-s-beagle
song-of-elli-old-age-elli-s-song
the-last-unicorn
old-age
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Peter S. Beagle |
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34d8f3e
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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..
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peter-s-beagle
song-of-elli-old-age-elli-s-song
the-last-unicorn
old-age
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Peter S. Beagle |
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87a632c
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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 madness here in a poisoned world. 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.
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tolkien
inspirational
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Peter S. Beagle |
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3392998
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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 schemes, Flying's not near as much fun as it seems.
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irony
lullaby
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Peter S. Beagle |
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fa41384
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The magician was studying her face with his green eyes. "Your face is wet," he said worriedly. "I hope that's spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world -- oh, it must be spray. Come with me. It had better be spray."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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851d1c2
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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.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a2bfded
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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 do is see his face, his voice when he says the word... and than you know that anyone who can imagine Hell has the power to make it real for other people.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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96a6740
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He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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6b34cd9
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If a man loved me, I would have talked myself into loving him, and I would have loved him very deeply after a while.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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6ba1d99
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How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns (...) But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else -- what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?"
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Peter S. Beagle |
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7e19de2
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and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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216700a
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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"
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b1353cd
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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.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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e22dd01
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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?
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world
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Peter S. Beagle |
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91e1415
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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 from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."
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hero
sing
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Peter S. Beagle |
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91a4c1b
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but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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cf09a72
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Farewell,' she said. 'I hope you hear many more songs' - which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a720ef3
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The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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d316195
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It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now, I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clot, or a betrayer, and so I must be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not a..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a2474b8
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I know why you did it too. You can't become mortal yourself until you change her back again. Isn't that it? You don't care what happens to her, or to the others, just as long as you become a real magician, even if you change the Bull into a bullfrog, because it's still just a trick when you do it. You don't care about anything but magic, and what kind of magician is that? Schmendrick, I don't feel good. I have to sit down." Schmendrick must..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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5ca3569
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When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b69da9f
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Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)
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happiness
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Peter S. Beagle |
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0f07aab
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I fear it, for her sake. It would mean that she too is a wanderer now, and that is a fate for human beings, not for unicorns. But I hope, of course I hope.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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85d2e2f
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It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space--that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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9167986
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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 to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seekin..
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time
magic
nature
enchanted
born
virgins
pool
vain
unicorn
mate
forest
spring
watching
animals
unicorns
beautiful
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Peter S. Beagle |
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4aaf997
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The impulse is being called reactionary now, but lovers of Middle-earth want to go there. I would myself, like a shot. For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien's considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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329c778
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No," he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice... whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a0b1d70
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Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.
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love
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Peter S. Beagle |
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5c9d07d
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The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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721586a
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some things aren't any good unless they're shared. 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.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b9e2171
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When I was a young man and very well thought of, I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied. I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins, And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know The secret I shelter and savor and save I wait for the one who will see through my seeming, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.' The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens; The ladi..
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destructiveness
lament
vice
sin
habit
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Peter S. Beagle |
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5724ce4
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What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain-- What is gone is gone.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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f09afcb
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The woman I loved died because I did not love her enough - what greater sin is there than that?" (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Fifke and the Angel)"
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shame
sin
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Peter S. Beagle |
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12a1aeb
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Her face was a stranger's face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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c23b566
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Haven't you ever been in a fairy tale before?
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Peter S. Beagle |
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2c6db83
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She said, "I will go no farther." "There is no choice. We can only go on." The magician said again. "We can only go on."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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42c0a99
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I will keep the colour of your eyes until no other in the world remembers your name.
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Peter S. Beagle |