The unicorn was weary of human beings. Watching her companions as they slept, seeing the shadows of their dreams scurry over their faces, she would feel herself bending under the heaviness of knowing...
The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a...
She has a newness, he said. Everything is for the first time. See how she moves, how she walks, how she turns her head—all for the first time, the first time anyone has ever done these things. See how...
Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that. A
Prodigies began to waken somewhere southwest of his twelfth rib, and he himself- still mirroring the Lady Amalthea- began to shine.
No, my lady, you are wrong! Death lives among the poor. Death lives in the foulest, darkest alleys of this city, in some vile, rat-ridden hovel that smells of- He stopped here, partly because he had n...
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.
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.
The Cat: When the wine drinks itself, when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time, only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull. There be a trick to it, of course.
What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. Always, always, it sighed, faithful beyond any man'...
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 co...
She leaned forward and put her arms around me. Sometimes it used to make me prickly when she did that, and I'd turn into a bag of knees and elbows. . .
She heard hearts bounce, tears brewing, and breath going backward, but nobody said a word. By the sorrow and loss and sweetness in their faces she knew that they recognized her, and she accepted their...
I sometimes think that a little fear, a little hunger, might be good for us—sharpen our souls,
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.
I am a king’s daughter, And if I cared to care, The moon that has no mistress Would flutter in my hair.
I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.
How terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards—exiled,
But another sound followed them long after these had faded, followed them into morning on a strange road— the tiny, dry sound of a spider weeping.
But I must go on, said the Lady Amalthea, for it is never finished. Even when I wake, I cannot tell what is real, and what I am dreaming as I move and speak and eat my dinner. I remember what cannot h...