Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
-
Folk are just folk, wherever you go, and it's only a nasty sort of person who thinks a body's a devil just because they come from another country and have different notions
-
You can't fix a bad man like a bad staircase.
-
I've come to think you only get so much bravery in one lifetime and if you spend it too soon, you're all out of fuck it all to hell by the time you really need it.
-
But even the wisest of men may die, and that is especially true when the wisest of men has a fondness for industrial chemicals.
-
The kind of smile that has kept a froggy, dark sort of surprise in its back pocket, and won’t spoil it too soon.
-
You have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.
-
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!
-
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
-
We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.
-
Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.
-
“I will keep it safe for you," Saturday whispered, barely brave enough to say it.
-
Your privilege is comprised of the questions you’ve never had to ask.
-
Trouble is, most times, when you go looking to sell your soul, nobody's buying.
-
No one is a cup for another to drink from
-
What happens to the West happens to Snow White, which is to say they both turn into jokes.
-
But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
-
What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your health at two in the afternoon.
-
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.
-
Wouldn't you like to have comrades?' But she would not like that. She wanted only to rest and to read her old, rain-swollen books, turning the pages carefully, so carefully.
-
He ran like if he kept running he could escape the last thousand years.
-
A clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever.
-
The bears, over the years, have developed a primitive but heartfelt Buddhist discipline. Beneath the cinnamon trees they practice the repetition of the Growling Sutra.
-
She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand.
-
You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.