Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
People are mostly happiest when they think they're just about to get the thing they want most. Before and after, they're all monsters.
Quotes to Explore
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I feel like if I live the Christian life, then the people should be able to see it in my everyday actions.
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People are like, 'Was it hard growing up mixed?' 'Did you not fit in?' and I'm like, 'No? What? That's the dumbest question ever.'
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When most people think of Woodrow Wilson, they see a dour minister's son who never cracked a smile, where in fact he was a man of genuine joy and great sadness.
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Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.
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Even where friendship is concerned, it takes me a long time to trust people.
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To be aware of others' accomplishments and the indebtedness we have to so many people is to appreciate and begin to respect all members of the human family.
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I think once you're in the public eye, whether you're a boss, a teacher or whatever you do, that you're automatically in the position of role model. You have people looking up to you, so whether you choose to accept it or not is a different question.
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I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.
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My fiancee's brother-in-law was recently paralysed in an accident and it really brought home the fact that thousands of young people live with spinal injuries. It's an issue I wish had more coverage.
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Never let anybody get you down. Never give in to people who say nasty things on the Internet. Work to represent women in the best way possible because, even though respect and equality for women has progressed over time, it's still not in the place that it should be.
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I didn't want to be the aunt where you come over and can't sit on the sofa.
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A good storyteller is a person with a good memory and hopes other people haven't.
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For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.
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It's business, selling comics, you work out what sells and you don't want to muck about with it too much.
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My work is entertainment, and I look at what entertains people, whether it's a selfie video or a music video.
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Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.
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Being human is difficult. Some people make it more difficult than others. I was one of those people.
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Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.
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People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.
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I wasn't a big star in the school plays or anything.
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I was always making things. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I would be an artist.
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We don't think much about the up and down of the public market.
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I feel like you are allowed in fiction to embrace imagination and try to enter other worlds. And I feel like you should push yourself to try to persuade your reader that you have the authority to engage with people who, you know, lived in the past, who live in the future, other genders, other places, other cultures.
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People are mostly happiest when they think they're just about to get the thing they want most. Before and after, they're all monsters.
