Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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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Things which are gone in the morning: sleep, darkness, grief, the moon. Women. Dreams.
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No one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough
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She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone.
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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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I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?
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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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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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[...] everything has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all.
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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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But something older and wiser within her said, Some things are for hiding and for keeping.
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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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A body can only deliver up the truth its bones know, Its blood, which is its history.
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It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!
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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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Never give up your voice for a man, you fucking guppy.
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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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That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever.
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What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.
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Love is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life.
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Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story.
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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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Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
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All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending.