Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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There are many sorts of lies. You could fill a shop with them. To be sure, lies are terribly common.
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He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.
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I am certainly intrepid and splendid and sordid and strong; I can see why you'd want me! But I'm afraid I've left the kettle on or whatever it is people say when they're bored.
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You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.
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You will live as you live in any world,' Madame Lebedeva said. She reached out her hand as if to grasp Marya's, as if to press it to her cheek, then closed her fingers, as if Marya's hand were in hers. 'With difficulty, and grief.
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I think this is very strange - All things are strange which are worth knowing (...).
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I’ve no idea what I shall do when I am grown! I don’t suppose there is much call for Knights or Bishops or Heroines in Omaha or even Chicago. And I’m sure other girls are much better at it than I.
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A girl who never smiles has such power - what men will do to turn up but one corner of her mouth! She already wears her red war-gown and her circlet of cinnabar poppies. They bring out the color in her grimace.
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I'm an extra in your story. Well, you're an extra in mine, boy.
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I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.
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It calmed him to collect the things he knew and did not speak of.
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Being Necessary is food no less than cabbages and strawberry pies.
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Magic has a logic, like algebra. Once you get to know it, it's easy. If this, then that. You write with a pencil, you don't make frog soup with it.
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Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.
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I have to know, I have to or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not.
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What happens to anything beautiful? Viy ate it up.
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Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.
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“Am I truly such a villain? Is it really a cage if it’s the size of the world?” “Yes,” said Emily, Charlotte, and Anne together, rather more loudly than any of them expected.
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She smelled like accounts receivable. She looked like old money.
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No good thing can last forever, because people are terrible and we have this feeling, we all have this feeling, that if not for that essential terribleness we could have gotten further by now. Done better. Done more.
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But Fairyland is an old place, and old things have strange hungers.
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What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?
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Ragtime plinking, glasses clinking, choruses getting sung with only half the lyrics right, giggles bubbling over like a tower of champagne. It's a party, shaking down the dawn.
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It’s in our blood - we heard their distresses like a rung bell in our bones.