The Last Unicorn Quotes

“Take me with you. For laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.”

“Where have you been?” she cried. “Damn you, where have you been?” She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn. When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. “You don’t talk like that,” he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. “Don’t you know how to behave, woman? You don’t curtsy, either.” But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. “Where have you been?” Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn’s old dark eyes that looked down. “I am here now,” she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. “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?” With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. “I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?” The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose. The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, “She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world.” “She would be.” Molly sniffed. “It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue.” She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn’s cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, “It’s all right. I forgive you.”

“I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.”

“As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn’t say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”

“Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”

“We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.”

“I am no king, and I am no lord, And I am no soldier at-arms,” said he. “I’m none but a harper, and a very poor harper, That am come hither to wed with ye.” “If you were a lord, you should be my lord, And the same if you were a thief,” said she. “And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper, For it makes no matter to me, to me, For it makes no matter to me.” “But what if it prove that I am no harper? That I lied for your love most monstrously?” “Why, then I’ll teach you to play and sing, For I dearly love a good harp,” said she.”

“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”

“Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, “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.”

“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch’s door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”

“It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is.”

“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?”

“When I was alive, I believed as you do; that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that- then any time at all will be the right time for you.”

“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.”

“I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.”

“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 moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”

“Then what is magic for?” Prince Lír demanded wildly. “What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?” He gripped the magician’s shoulder hard, to keep from falling. Schmendrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, “That’s what heroes are for.”

“I love whom I love,” Prince Lir repeated firmly. “You have no power over anything that matters.”

“...she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by.”

“Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe, Sooner than I will live with you. Fish will come walking out of the sea, Sooner than you will come back to me.”

“there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.”

“Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”

“...no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.”

“The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.”

“Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.”

“Any woman can weep without tears,” she answered over her shoulder, “and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that’s riddle enough”