Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.
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Did everything that had magic have teeth?
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Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays.
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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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She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone.
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There must be a way! I have begun a Quest! Quests do not simply end. You win or you lose; it is not just suddenly over.
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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.
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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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[...] 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.
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You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
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Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day.
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After love, no one is what they were before.
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It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.
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Everything is always happening all at once, in the present tense, forever, the beginning and the end and the denouement and the remaindering.
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All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending.
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Remember, pain is not a test. Knowledge is not enough.
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She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.
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The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
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No one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough
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You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.
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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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Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story.
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Oh, aren't you just the rottenest wet blanket whoever spoiled a sport.
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We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.