Peter S. Beagle Quotes

When you're younger, love is this magic thing where the heavens open up. You live 40 years past that, you realize sometimes the heavens close down.

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

I believed in Santa Claus until I was 12!

How little is the promise of the child fulfilled in the man.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn't as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

Childhood is a promise that is never kept.

When you're little, your father is your hero. Mine was. Then it all becomes more complicated.

It was quite a blow to have my perfect image of my father shattered, but that's something we all face before we come to full adulthood.

I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up believing in all sorts of romantic ideas about hard work and justice and truth, and it seemed the real world was much more complicated and shaded than I wanted to believe.

It occurred to me the thing that broke my heart the most was when I grew up and realized everything wasn't an adventure. I got to a certain age and realized I couldn't be Indiana Jones.

I started out with this 'La Boheme' fantasy, but as you get older, the 'La Boheme' fantasy becomes less sexy, believe me.

You spend your childhood wanting to get out from your house and wanting to get away and out into the real world, and then as adults, we start to learn that things are not what we thought they were.

There comes a time in every man's life when he realises he will never be James Bond.

I'm glad Phil Jackson got the rings for Chicago. You traded me away from New York, cool. It's all business; it's all love, whatever. But I'm a grownup now. You not my hero no more.

Growing up, I looked up to real women. I didn't go in for hero worship and I still don't. Everybody has feet of clay.

He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.

My idealism has not abated, but I have witnessed it withering away nationwide, to the point where at least among the young, to have ideals is akin to being blinkered and oldfashioned.

The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.

They tell you to be careful because maybe you don't want to meet your heroes. I've met pretty much every one, and I've never been let down.

Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.

That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation. Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians- even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children.

Oh, Teddy, darling, thank you, thank you, for restoring my cynicism. I was too young to lose it.

Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, the whole world just goes downhill.

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see? Trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be And after all this time to find we're just like all the rest Stranded in the park and forced to confess To hiding on the Backstreets.