We are what we are forever, unchanging—you are everything all at once, past and present and future all rioting together. I pity you terribly, I could never bear to be like you, but I wonder and wonder...
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.
Oh, it's a beautiful day, it's an elegant, graceful day, and I'm sailing down the Strip in glamorous Las Vegas, on my motor scooter, in company with a certified illegal prostitute who loves poetry and...
If sacrificing herself for her husband's sake were to prove the last thing that Jassi ever did willingly for her new master . . . well, then, so be it, however bitter the taste to Carcharos. Pride had...
I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me....
I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.
He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started...
He is a true hero, she said, a dragonslayer, a giantkiller, a rescuer of maidens, a solver of impossible riddles. He may be the greatest hero of all, because he's a good man as well. They aren't alway...
You deserve the services of a great wizard, he said to the unicorn, but I’m afraid you’ll have to be glad of the aid of a second-rate pickpocket.
What I forget not only ceases to exist, but never really existed in the first place.
There's more meaning than magic to this
The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror.
The sight of her makes me want to do battle with all evil and ugliness,
So you're an angel, fine, that's terrific. Now give me back my shadows. (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel)
It cannot be an ill fortune to have loved a unicorn,
I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling.
I love whom I love.
I hate selkie stories. They're always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat and brought it downstairs between finger and thumb and said What's this...
I didn't know unicorns had names, I said. I didn't know they ever loved people.They don't. Only this one. He turned and walked away swiftly, saying over his shoulder, Her name was Amalthea.
How's the Angel of Death supposed to do his job with clipped wings?