Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Human contact is a terrible drug. Sometimes, you’ll even take the hit you know is tainted. You can’t stop yourself. The need is too strong.
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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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Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
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When you don’t need anything anymore, the only thing you need is stories, and songs, and beauty, and spectacle. That’s the good stuff. The stuff that reminds us who we are.
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Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
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And indeed, as night drew on the sky like a bodice, lacing it with the last beams of sunlight
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I do not want to muddle about with Politicks, and whenever two Folk of any sort are in a room together there are always Politicks to be muddled in.
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A tongue is very like a gun, which is why they nearly rhyme. Both can be fired to devastating effect, for good or evil, and both can explode in your hands, wounding your comrades instead of your enemies.
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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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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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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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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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You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
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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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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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We were just holes, after all, holes filled up with light, and deep in our secret hearts we worried that we were an accident
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Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day.
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The war is always going badly.
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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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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 looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
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Love is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life.
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When you’ve lost your girl, it doesn’t much matter where you live. Everywhere is just The Place She Isn’t, and that’s the front and back of it.