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?

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.

...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.

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!

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, shivering with the desire to go to her"...[later, Molly asked the cat] "Why were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her." "If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will... The price is more than a cat can pay.

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.

If a man loved me, I would have talked myself into loving him, and I would have loved him very deeply after a while.