Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.
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Luck is a finite and rare substance in the universe, like palladium or cobalt. To use it, you have to take it from somebody else.
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Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.
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"We like the wrong sort of girls", they wrote. "They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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But a person’s smell and their alarms and borrowed shirts and secret words linger for a long time. Much longer than a house.
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I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.
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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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Can you imagine what it would do to a person, to know that they were standing between three people and that marrow-deep, desperate need?
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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.
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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.
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She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone.
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Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.
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When you can change something just by saying a word, that is magic.
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When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another.
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No one is a cup for another to drink from
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What is a map, but a thing that gets you where you're going? -Mr. Map
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...the beginning is where the end gets born.
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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.
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You have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.
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He ran like if he kept running he could escape the last thousand years.
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That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
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It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!
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You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won't forget your war either.
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You see her as you see anyone in this world: distorted, warped, reflected, refracted, contorted, mutilated by time.