Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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One is always homesick for places where one came to grief.
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“Brother," he wept, "my heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it." "Tscha!" said the Tsar of Birds. "Life is like that.”
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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 will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.
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Girls laugh. Their hair giggles down their back.
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There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from.
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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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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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That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
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Never trust anyone under one hundred!
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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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Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.
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In my experience, folk find it nigh on impossible to call a thing what it is.
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"We like the wrong sort of girls", they wrote. "They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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Things which are gone in the morning: sleep, darkness, grief, the moon. Women. Dreams.
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But something older and wiser within her said, Some things are for hiding and for keeping.
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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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I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
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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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Love is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life.
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“Is it really a cage if it’s the size of the world?” “Yes,” said Emily, Charlotte, and Anne together, rather more loudly than any of them expected.
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So I talk to the dead. They're the only ones who can see the whole story. All they've got is story.
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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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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.