Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
That's just the first part. What others call you, you become. It's a terrible magic that everyone can do - so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become.

Quotes to Explore
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Any creative process comes with a level of self-analysis and self-criticism. There's a lot of waking up in the middle of the night going, 'Oh, I wish I had done that differently.'
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The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
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As you get older, you overthink and can talk yourself out of anything. It's good to be a bit reckless and experimental.
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You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.
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At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution.
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There are only three outs an inning, and they should be treasured. Give one away, and you're making everything harder for yourself.
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It's a fairly recent thing but I've become very fond of making drinks myself.
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I call my therapist every other day. It's not a one-stop shop. You have to push away all that negativity in your head. Face it, name it, let it go.
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I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation.
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When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
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Don't think of yourself as a woman in business.
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I think you need to do something new to keep reinventing yourself.
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I learned, especially from my mother, to respect the profession and take it seriously, but not take yourself too seriously.
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When you're on the victory podium, you're a queen, but when you come down from it, you're nobody. You cannot be too proud of yourself.
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I call myself a geriatric starlet.
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I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion.
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Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
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Divorced from the cosmos, from nature, from society and from each other, we have become fractured and fragmented.
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My mother painted and wrote. She always had a painting in progress on an easel in the kitchen, so our house always smelled like oil paint. At night, she wrote after she'd put my sisters and me to bed, and the sound of her typing was our lullaby.
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We must again carry the burden of our people and shoulder our commitment to leading them to the promised land.
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There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
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If Stalin could only see us now, with the American Ambassador here, he'd turn in his grave.
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That's just the first part. What others call you, you become. It's a terrible magic that everyone can do - so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become.