Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.
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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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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.
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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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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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I thought that for a long while, but you chose me, and then you chose him, and choosing is hard - one choice is never the end of the story.
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Mary's smile is a spotlight - whomever it lands upon becomes brighter, becomes more real. It lands upon us.
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Your privilege is comprised of the questions you’ve never had to ask.
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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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The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
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We who were once living can guard you still, and love you, and keep you living safe and whole. Nothing ever truly dies.
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Remember, pain is not a test. Knowledge is not enough.
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Girls laugh. Their hair giggles down their back.
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I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.
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The Marsh King raised himself up and ushered me out the door with the air of a host who has just realized he is one guest away from a comfortable nap.
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Everything in the world is a boxing match in your heart, between Boldness and Not-Boldness. You let them holler inside you and wallop each other with Arguments For and Against. Then you end by betting on one or the other and that’s how things get decided.
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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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It's a secret and if you tell a secret the secret comes alive and can never be kept safe at home again.
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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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Things which are gone in the morning: sleep, darkness, grief, the moon. Women. Dreams.
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But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
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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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It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
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Did everything that had magic have teeth?