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0c427a3
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Outside, the night lay coiled in the street, cobra-cold and scaled with stars.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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d31791d
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Wisdom is finding joy in bewilderment
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Peter S. Beagle |
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2e789ca
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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. Unfortunately, it seems to be working backward at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this ..
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magic
potential
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Peter S. Beagle |
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66b9001
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because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a2f3cbf
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Lir said, "It is my right. A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last." But Schmendrick answered, "This is not the end, either for you or for her."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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f536cc2
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Haggard, I would not be you for all the world," he declared. "You have let your doom in by the front door, although it will not depart that way. (...) Farewell, poor Haggard, farewell!"
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Peter S. Beagle |
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51e40a0
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But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lir demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry -- and if you don't think t..
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quest
hero
fool
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Peter S. Beagle |
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de2bd14
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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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heroes
reading
books
imagination
dreams
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Peter S. Beagle |
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9b8dcfd
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She touched you twice,' he said in a little while. 'The first touch was to bring you to life again, but the second was for you.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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fcb43f5
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No," she said, answering his eyes. "I can never regret."[...]"I can sorrow," she offered gently, "but it's not the same thing."
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Peter S. Beagle |
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10f4313
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No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy--save one, and I thank you for that, too.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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fdc46e6
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Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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9fc8bd4
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I love whom I love.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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f99aaa4
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I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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913862e
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She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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f07894f
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I love you, more, I think, than I know, but our kind of love isn't a sword. It's a light. Not a fire. A small light, just bright enough to read love letters by and keep the animals at a growling distance. In time it will go out. All lights go out. So do all fires, if it's any comfort. Love me, and look at me, and remember me, as I'll remember you.
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love
remember-me
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b30e45c
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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 was too great for her body to understand.
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unicorns
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Peter S. Beagle |
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d86e2be
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It was not her dream that chilled him, but that she did not weep as she told it. As a hero, he understood weeping women and knew how to make them stop crying--generally you killed something--but her calm terror confused and unmanned him, while the shape of her face crumbled the distant dignity he had been so pleased at maintaining. When he spoke again, his voice was young and stumbling.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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1413af4
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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?
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Peter S. Beagle |
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aa436a0
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Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose-- What is gone is gone.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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341da4e
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Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard's castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts...
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b0ee35a
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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 trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms.
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time
worms
wanting
unhappy
unicorn
forest
restless
restlessness
leaving
peace
unicorns
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Peter S. Beagle |
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9545411
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Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.
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poets
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Peter S. Beagle |
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3190738
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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 out in a day.
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robin-hood
last-unicorn
outlaws
peter-s-beagle
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Peter S. Beagle |
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6558725
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There are people,' he said, 'who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don't do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It's born in you, whether you give or take, and that's the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it. We'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and ther..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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eb3e5e9
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I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better.
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coward
lazy
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Peter S. Beagle |
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6e8a22b
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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.
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music
humor
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Peter S. Beagle |
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d781a8e
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Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were such things." "Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?" "No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns."
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time
unicorn
changes
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a8e4886
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I will miss it so," she said beside him. "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 another than eat--oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave claw marks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dr..
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Peter S. Beagle |
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078b6d3
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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 to see them at all, to look at them and see something else-what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?
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men
hate
forgotten
forgetting
unicorns
kill
forget
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Peter S. Beagle |
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0c540f1
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How's the Angel of Death supposed to do his job with clipped wings?
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Peter S. Beagle |
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099cb08
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There is an old saying that there is no country as unhappy as one that need heroes." (King Pelles the Sure)"
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war
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Peter S. Beagle |
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147e238
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There's a line in the Bible about perfect love casting out fear. That I don't know about, but orneriness will do it every time.
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stubbornness
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Peter S. Beagle |
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8d92ea6
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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 is beautiful.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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359c922
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My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy--save one, and I thank you for that, too.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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dd86697
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The magic on you is only magic and will vanish a 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 always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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9ec9fed
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So you're an angel, fine, that's terrific. Now give me back my shadows. (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel)
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Peter S. Beagle |
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c8b913a
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I am infected with life and will die of it in time.
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life
jonathan-rebeck
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b5fa6b0
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I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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5f3a5f1
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But I felt them...hungry shadows who knew my name, clawing at my mind and my soul to be let in - and if I let them in there would be nothing left of me but skin; nothing but a shadow inside, like themselves. (By Moonlight)
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Peter S. Beagle |
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a9ba5ed
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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 the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
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death
forever
night
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Peter S. Beagle |
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78257d7
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You're in the story with the rest of us now, and you must go with it, whether you will or no.
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story
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Peter S. Beagle |
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b5cd7f1
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My father hates cats. He says that there is no such thing as a cat -- it is just a shape that all manner of imps, hobs and devilkins like to put on, to gain easy entrance into the homes of men.
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Peter S. Beagle |
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e934785
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I will kill you if you set me free,' the eyes said. 'Set me free.
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free
kill
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Peter S. Beagle |