Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.
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'Holes' was my favorite book ever. So you know when you love a book and you hear it's being made into a movie and it makes you a little annoyed at first? But I would've loved to play the Shia LaBeouf role in that movie when I was younger. I just wanted to be the rebellious kid on the old digging camp.
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Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book – you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention.
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I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book. Actually, I always wanted to be in a comic book. I watched cartoons when I was a kid, too, and both comics and cartoons lit fire in my imagination. This realm holds a lot of interest for me, a lot of passion for me. So to be comic-ized, yeah, that's cool.
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I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.
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We open our door, and we are still committed to open our door for our brothers in Syria. But doesn't mean that we should not keep alone. The international community should really - should really share Lebanon the numbers of refugees and share Lebanon the cost of their living.
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For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.
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Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
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The problem is too often they are boring, and boring in a meeting happens for the same reason as in a book or movie - when there is not enough compelling tension. Meetings should be intense.
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Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
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Housekeeping is incredibly difficult with three kids. I'm trying to be more relaxed. You'll go insane if you try to have a picture-book house.
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'Snow' is my most popular book in the United States. But in Turkey, it was not as popular as 'My Name is Red,' or even 'The Museum of Innocence,' because the secular leaders didn't want this bourgeois Orhan trying to understand these head-scarf girls.
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Wagner's philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner. Bruckner hadn't written a single word against Jews. Wagner's book on the Jews was one of the most infamous books of the 19th century.
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I write the best book that I can write each time.
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I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.'
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Because they feel that without them telling you to do this, you wouldn't have had the characters that you have, you wouldn't have the book that you have.
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Dedication: To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.
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Research to me is as important, or more important, than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.
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The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!
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Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy book industry players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top.
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'The intelligent have been overwhelmed by the dull. Is that not an invasion?''More, I would say, of a self-betrayal.'
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Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up along themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which is often something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal.
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Divorce doesn't fit my cookie-cutter image.
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A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.
