Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Anything is a poem if you say it often enough.
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Check your pockets, my chimney-child.
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Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit.
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...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.
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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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Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven't you ever heard a story about Koschei? He's only got the one. Act one, Scene one: pretty girl. Act one, Scene two: pretty girl gone!
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Woman! Come out! I have - " She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
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But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life.
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I’m quite civilized, I promise,’ Manythanks sniffed, smiling. ‘Wairwulves are cultured. We have choirs and charity races and rotary clubs. It’s when we’re human that you must take care.
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"Remember this when you are queen," she breathed. "I told you my secrets."
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I was happy, the sun was high. I had enough.
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And Miss Oleander Coy had herself a blue mouth. Little stains at the edges of her raspberry lips where she put her pen when she was thinking, which was always.
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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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In the beginning there was Dust, and in the end there will be Dust, and in the middle there is Dust, Dust, Dust!
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What happens to the West happens to Snow White, which is to say they both turn into jokes.
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She must have cried for some secret amphibian reason. Then her dress caught on fire while they danced, and there was a mess, but that's neither here nor there.
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Everything in the world is a boxing match in your heart, between Boldness and Not-Boldness. You let them holler inside you and wallop each other with Arguments For and Against. Then you end by betting on one or the other and that’s how things get decided.
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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
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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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The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home.
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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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A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic.
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All tamed things are made a bit ridiculous in the process, you know.
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[...] everything has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all.