Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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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A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must.
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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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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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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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You couldn't ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at last, the one that ends in joy.
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You see her as you see anyone in this world: distorted, warped, reflected, refracted, contorted, mutilated by time.
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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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And indeed, as night drew on the sky like a bodice, lacing it with the last beams of sunlight
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Still life is boring. Never stand still! Jumping bean life!
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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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This is my heart - carry it with you. I will dream of you in the dark, and you will taste it in my tea, and feel it in my shoes.
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I’ve always found chess to be a bit too much like real life to provide much enjoyment as a game.
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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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I’m quite civilized, I promise,’ Manythanks sniffed, smiling. ‘Wairwulves are cultured. We have choirs and charity races and rotary clubs. It’s when we’re human that you must take care.
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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'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.
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First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
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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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It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.
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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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Most people don’t like complexity. They would prefer the world to be simple.
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But something older and wiser within her said, Some things are for hiding and for keeping.