Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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 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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And Miss Oleander Coy had herself a blue mouth. Little stains at the edges of her raspberry lips where she put her pen when she was thinking, which was always.
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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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Love is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life.
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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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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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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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No one is a cup for another to drink from
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We’ve made too many movies, you and I. Or too few. Always too few. Too many to have any meaning, too few to say what we meant.
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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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Histories are instruments of oppression.
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Things that begin and end in grief: marriage, harvest, childbirth. Journeys away from home. Journeys toward home. Surgeries. Love. Weeping.
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But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
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Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven't you ever heard a story about Koschei? He's only got the one. Act one, Scene one: pretty girl. Act one, Scene two: pretty girl gone!
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...snow is the beginning and the end of everything...
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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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We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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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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A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic.
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The Heart of Fairyland is a story
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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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It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
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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.