Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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... but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.
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She was ... unhappy. It was part of her, you could not separate her from it. She was sad the way a horse is strong or a bird flies.
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War must always be done out of sight, it shocks people and they stop immediately.
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This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
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If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life.
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Shadows are where magic comes from. Your dark and dancing self, slipping behind and ahead and around, never quite looking at the sun.
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September had no natural defense against lost things, being one herself.
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It is important to announce your intentions at top volume, she thought, or your intentions will think you are ashamed of them.
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He does everything a Marshal does but twice as hard, twice as dirty, and without the soft and cushioning arms of the government to wipe his tears.
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It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.
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Do you understand Christ to be more like an ox (excuse us, three oxen) or more like a door?
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I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.
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Snow White gets a Social Security card. She gets a job building houses out in California. Picks oranges.
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So a half-breed goatsnake, a Yith, and a Ghast walk into a bar.
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In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.
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Everything good in the world has feathers and wings and claws.
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You will live as you live in any world...With difficulty, and grief.
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I thought: this is how you make a human being. A human being is beautiful and sick. A human being glitters and starves.
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In my experience, folk find it nigh on impossible to call a thing what it is.
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Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.
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Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships.
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She wasn’t angry. You can’t get angry just because the world’s so much bigger than you and you’re stuck in it.
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Everything looks like magic when you don’t understand it.
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But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.