I will miss it so,” she said beside him. “This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat—oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave claw marks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off. Such a stupid way to feel. I will be all dirty from clutching at this stupid planet, and the gods will laugh at me.

From 2003 through 2011 Beagle was involved in a financial dispute with Granada over nonpayment of contractually due profit and merchandising shares. Beagle's work as a screenwriter interrupted his early career direction as a novelist magazine nonfiction author and short-story writer. In the 1970s Beagle turned to screenwriting.

During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968) a fantasy novel he wrote in his twenties which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987.