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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the complexity of human identity and the vastness of collective experiences within an individual.
In this quote, Peter S. Beagle articulates a profound sense of interconnectedness with humanity and history, suggesting that within ourselves lies a multitude of voices and experiences that shape who we are. The speaker expresses a newfound awareness of the rich tapestry of cultural and personal identities that exist within them, highlighting a journey of self-discovery that reveals how our individual identities are influenced by a broader, shared human experience.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about personal growth and understanding one's place in the world.
More from Peter S. Beagle
All quotes →Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.
You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.
...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.
Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
Similar quotes
It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.
Not much longer shall we have time for reading lessons of the past. An inexorable present calls us to the defense of a great future.
If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.
I toyed briefly with an image someone once mentioned to me, of a village in the shadow of a twin-peaked mountain. In the morning the sun rises. At lunch it sets behind the mountain. In the early afternoon it rises once more. The cocks crow for the second time, and later the sun sets again. No. One peak. Metaphors should not be belaboured.
It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint.