Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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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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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We think . . . that girls ought to sing. They ought to sing, and dance while they're singing. But we are not girls, and so can be almost certain that we know nothing about the matter.
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A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must.
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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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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
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No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.
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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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Draw the world the way you want it. Draw it and it will be.
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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.
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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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Are you the only human in the world then? And all of the rest of us monsters?
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Al kept it coming and nobody asked how and his only rule was: share. Be warm, be innocent, open your everything, speak easy. Share
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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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Most people don’t like complexity. They would prefer the world to be simple.
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One is always homesick for places where one came to grief.
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Still life is boring. Never stand still! Jumping bean life!
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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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But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
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For all that they love to make kings, John’s folk seem to have little interest in the actual business of ruling anything. They like to become, they do not like to be.
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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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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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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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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.