Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

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.

Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

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.

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?

You ever want to see real witchcraft, you watch people protecting their comfort, their beliefs.

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. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them - but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.