Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
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If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.
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Never assume that a woman is wicked simply because she is ugly and behaves unfavorably towards you. It is unbecoming behavior for a Prince.
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I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.
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I belong in the refrigerator. Because the truth is, I'm just food for a superhero. He'll eat up my death and get the energy he needs to become a legend.
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Calpurnia squinted through her goggles and thought to herself, That is a Key. Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.
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Falling in love is embarrassing. It is not hardcore. It is not part of the scene.
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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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She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.
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A ring don’t make a bride, that’s all.
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The Glasshobs built it to keep an eye on the stars, who have a tendency to run off on adventures and forget about how much we down-below folks need to navigate and cast horoscopes and meet lovers on balconies.
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That's how it goes - as soon as there's anything interesting in Ancient Greece, some arsehole with a magic hat comes along to murder it.
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War must always be done out of sight, it shocks people and they stop immediately.
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The dead know how to savor as the living never can.
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Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything pulses to a beat laid down by the Big Bang. Everything feels the drumline of creation from star to sex to song.
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It was on the to-do list, but you know to-do lists. They get longer and longer until you might as well just carve the last items on your tombstone. Do the dishes.
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What matters is entertainment. Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit. The dead fear boredom the way mortals fear death.
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She is dead. Almost certainly dead. Nearly conclusively dead. She is, at the very least, not answering her telephone.
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And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules until you are ready to rule yourself.
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She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
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...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.
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But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.
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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.
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Patience is always the last ingredient in any spell, the last part in any machine, what ever your original blue prints say.