Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
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Sometimes I worry. Worrying is defined as obsessive examination of one’s own code.
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Everything in creation is just a trick of the light - the only difference between heaven and hell is who's running those lights, who's got the switch, who knows the cues.
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Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
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Things that cannot long be kept secret: death in the family, the loss of a ring, corruption of the spirit, boredom, illicit love. Sickness. Addiction. Pregnancy.
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Storytelling can save you. Both the telling and the listening.
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Perhaps, if you take a long enough view, we are all stronger than our goblins.
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Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles - and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.
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You couldn't ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at last, the one that ends in joy.
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Most folk have three faces - the face they get when they're children, the face they own when they're grown, and the face they've earned when they're old.
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And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.
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A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.
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Any story told is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.
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Did everything that had magic have teeth?
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We were just holes, after all, holes filled up with light, and deep in our secret hearts we worried that we were an accident
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Oh, aren't you just the rottenest wet blanket whoever spoiled a sport.
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Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.
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September shut her eyes several times and opened them again, just to be sure, just to be certain she was back in Fairyland, that she wasn’t simply knocked silly by her fall.
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People are clocks who think they wind themselves.
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I got a heart like a half bottle of no-label whiskey. Nothing to brag on, but enough for you, and all your friends, too.
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All tamed things are made a bit ridiculous in the process, you know.
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There's no fun in arguing if you never get shown up. Who plays a game it there's no chance they'll lose? I do so crave to be proven wrong,. It is as sweet as proving yourself right, when done properly.
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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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One is always homesick for places where one came to grief.