Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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“I can never remember my dreams," said the shadow of the Marquess quietly. "You must have had rich, tasty ones then. When you can't remember a dream, it's because a Baku ate it.
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Greta, Greta, he whispered, eyes shut in rapture, on thy breast I write my Edda, at thy feet I lay the keys of Niflheim, by thy leave alone, I live, and breathe, and die.
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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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You can't say no if you don't have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn't even want to. No is the heart of thinking.
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We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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When you can change something just by saying a word, that is magic.
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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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"The Heart of Fairyland is a story," she said, and she felt so warm and light and full of rightness of it that she thought she might faint.
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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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No one is a cup for another to drink from
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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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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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After love, no one is what they were before.
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What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your health at two in the afternoon.
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Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit.
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Never assume that a woman is wicked simply because she is ugly and behaves unfavorably towards you. It is unbecoming behavior for a Prince.
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She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.
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But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
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That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever.
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You took on a Quest, which is a thing only men - and exceedingly stupid men, usually - do.
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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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There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from.
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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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Forests have secrets,' he said gently. 'It's practically what they're for. To hide things. To separate one world from another.