Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Chicago at the time owned a lake the size of a sea, several advertising firms, at least six tribes of marauding criminals, healthy herds of sailors grazing free, the first Ferris wheel in all the world, and more wind than it could care for.
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It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.
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Byron kissed her gloved hand as they stepped lightly round one another. He could dance like rivers could run. No one had ever kissed her hand before. Emily felt like she was going to throw up and like she was flying all at once.
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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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September had only had coffee once, when her Aunt Margaret had snuck her a sip while her mother wasn’t looking. It tasted bitter, but wild and strange. She rather wanted to taste it again.
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You can be innocent again. It's not true, what they say, that you can never get it back. You can. It's only that most folk cannot be bothered.
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It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it.
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War must always be done out of sight, or it shocks people and they stop immediately.
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September had no natural defense against lost things, being one herself.
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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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I know real dirt looks nothing like this. Nothing like soft blood flecked with black bone.
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She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.
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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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If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.
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Bad luck relies absolutely on perfect timing
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But we had young turnips and mustard greens in our befuddled stomach that day, and these things make bravery.
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And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.
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Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.
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I could not say what creeps and whispers through the branches and down the threaded Road, but I hear it, and I am not afraid.
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No one says a word that has not been spoken a thousand times before, a thousand thousand times, and even the first of those was a repetition of words that came before.
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Falling in love is embarrassing. It is not hardcore. It is not part of the scene.
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A prophetic world that can never come true.
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Thing is, just because you make a body shiver don’t make it yours.
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It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.