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Quotes from A Fine and Private Place — Peter S. Beagle

born 1939 United States

← All quotes by Peter S. Beagle

21 quotes

The one delusion you never had in your life was the one about the permanence of happiness.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

I am infected with life and will die of it in time.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

He sighed, telling himself that the inevitable is a great blessing to a man weary of making choices.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

I was lost too. What else would I have been doing in Iowa?

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

I’m sure I’ll go to heaven. I’ve been dull enough.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

He had foreseen every such change in his fortune, ignored it always, and called the refusal innocence.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

I walked a long way that night, thinking many philosophic thoughts which, fortunately, I don’t remember.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

It’s like marriage. The race there is between total knowledge of each other and death. If death comes first, it’s considered a successful marriage.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

If I sound petty and malicious, it’s because I am.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

You’re greediest when you’re born, and after that it’s downhill all the way. Live to be two hundred and you wouldn’t demand anything.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

There is no such thing as abstract justice. There is such a thing as law. The difference should be apparent.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

What can I tell you, Laura? That I confused justice and revenge? People do that a great deal, and they always have.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Love is not an excuse for bad taste.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

I’ve always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues—you’ve seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

He had always detested funerals and avoided them as much as possible. But it’s different, he thought, when it’s your own funeral. You feel it’s one of those occasions that shouldn’t be missed.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Funny that I should become such a great believer in justice. I always used to open my history courses by telling the students that if they expected to hear a series of movie scenarios, with the good guys winning in the end, they might as well all go home because not only didn’t the good guys win, but there weren’t any good guys.

A Fine and Private Place (1960)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Peter S. Beagle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.