Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays.
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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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Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
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The Heart of Fairyland is a story
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Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day.
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I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.
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Remember, pain is not a test. Knowledge is not enough.
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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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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'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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“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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Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
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So much light, sweet girl, begins in the dark.
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That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
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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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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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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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Honesty is such a nasty habit, dear. Like biting your nails.
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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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You see her as you see anyone in this world: distorted, warped, reflected, refracted, contorted, mutilated by time.
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The point's not what it costs; it's what it costs you. Everything you have. That's my price, that's my prize, that's my ransom, and that's my rune. The only price in the world that matters is the one that hurts to pay.
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The thing I hate about being dead is you can’t move on. I was in love with him when I died, so I’ll be in love with him till the sun burns out.
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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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Everyone Is Looking for a Book Strong Enough to Change Them.