Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Love is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life.
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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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I have survived, but I have not been spared.
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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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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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But something older and wiser within her said, Some things are for hiding and for keeping.
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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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Love is what grown folk do to each other because the law frowns on killing.
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But a person’s smell and their alarms and borrowed shirts and secret words linger for a long time. Much longer than a house.
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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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It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.
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...snow is the beginning and the end of everything...
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Things I Will Try to Say More Often: Why? I love you. I’m sorry. May I have chocolate? Yes. yes. yes.
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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
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I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.
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It is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation
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He ran like if he kept running he could escape the last thousand years.
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You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
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She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.
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You have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.
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The kind of smile that has kept a froggy, dark sort of surprise in its back pocket, and won’t spoil it too soon.
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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
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What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.
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That is what happens when a person lives alone for so long - no one else can change their ways.