Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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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A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must.
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Woman! Come out! I have - " She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
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In the beginning there was Dust, and in the end there will be Dust, and in the middle there is Dust, Dust, Dust!
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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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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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Histories are instruments of oppression.
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The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home.
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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.
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I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.
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Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.
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Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.
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It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
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I've always had enough, even if my enough and your enough are as different as an elephant and a minaret.
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A body can only deliver up the truth its bones know, Its blood, which is its history.
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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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What is a map, but a thing that gets you where you're going? -Mr. Map
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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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In his own country, Death can be kind.
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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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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 took on a Quest, which is a thing only men - and exceedingly stupid men, usually - do.
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I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.
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The Heart of Fairyland is a story