Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

The kind of smile that has kept a froggy, dark sort of surprise in its back pocket, and won’t spoil it too soon.

Catherynne M. Valente

• Smile
• Surprise
• Froggy
• Not Spoil

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Quotes to Explore

• I've never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that - of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Important
  • Feeling
  • Yourself

• The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Why
  • Personality
  • Find

• The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously invented dynamite and felt sorry about it.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Peace
  • Sorry
  • Been

• If I focus on being an activist and my job is to be a rapper, I'm not going to be as good of a rapper. I need to focus on hip-hop and focus on making the music, so that when the activists come to me and they need my voice to create a platform, then I've got enough people listening to me. Not because I'm conscious, but because I'm dope.

  

  Talib Kweli Black Star
  • People
  • Good
  • Music

• I didn't want the public in my personal life at all - I thought that people might perceive me as too normal, and I'd lose that larger-than-life rock star persona. You've got to protect that!

  

  Vanilla Ice
  • People
  • Life
  • Rock

• To me, 'The End of the Jews' - both the title and the novel itself - is about the end of pat, uncritical ways of understanding oneself in the world.

  

  Adam Mansbach
  • World
  • Understanding
  • End

• Now we have new tools for exploring the deep and have to pull together a deep exploration program that takes advantage of them.

  

  Edith Widder
  • Together
  • Deep
  • Tools

• When in doubt, do it.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • Doubt
  • When In Doubt

• There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

  

  Napoleon Bonaparte
  • World
  • Long
  • Sword

• I always think that struggle can bring out the best in people - or the worst.

  

  Abby Wambach
  • People
  • Best
  • Struggle

• I have done my time living on the run. I'm British and I want to come home.

  

  Gary Glitter
  • Time
  • Done
  • Home

• And of course, pop music is all about memorability and simplicity and positive messages and a little dash of joy.

  

  Feist
  • Music
  • Joy
  • Positive

• Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I'm aware of what skilled journalists they are, but I find it hard because of the corny way they present it.

  

  Ira Glass
  • Me
  • Present
  • Television

• Terrorism is a psychological warfare. Terrorists try to manipulate us and change our behavior by creating fear, uncertainty, and division in society.

  

  Patrick J. Kennedy
  • Society
  • Fear
  • Change

• Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm' by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Music
  • Bad

• Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.

  

  Patrick Rothfuss
  • Real
  • Why
  • Simplicity

• I have visited (Burma) and I know that there is only one instrument of government, and that is the army...If I were Aung San Suu Kyi, I think I'd rather be behind a fence and be a symbol than after two or three years, be found impotent.

  

  Lee Kuan Yew
  • Army
  • Fence

• In French there is an old expression, 'la patte', meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and all that retinal painting.

  

  Marcel Duchamp
  • Style
  • Painting

• Sei giorni me n'andai matina e seraPer balze e per pendici orride e strane,Dove non via, dove sentier non era.

  

  Ludovico Ariosto

• I can't go to the hardware store, cut a sheet in half and staple it to the window anymore. It doesn't fly.

  

  James Badge Dale
  • Fly

• I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'

  

  Tavis Smiley
  • Country
  • Love
  • Expectations

• Why don’t we just sit and stare and do nothing? Nothing at all for a while I like the way you smile I could be your state and I could be your nation It doesn’t get better than home, now does it?

  

  Zooey Deschanel
  • Why
  • Home
  • Smile

• You must get Israelis to understand the feelings and the hopes and the traumas of the Palestinians. You have to get the Palestinians to understand why Israel is behaving the way it does: What is the legacy of the Holocaust, what are the fears of average Jewish people?

  

  Uri Avnery
  • People
  • Why
  • Legacy

• The kind of smile that has kept a froggy, dark sort of surprise in its back pocket, and won’t spoil it too soon.

  

  Catherynne M. Valente
  • Smile
  • Surprise
  • Froggy