Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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In a city by the sea that was certainly never called anything so bourgeois as St. Petersburg, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street.
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They were all whispers now, the two of them, conspirators and thieves.
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Don't you know how far women stretch?
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If there are spells, they have a right to weave.
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You're just shy of figuring out how to shuffle your horde of hormone-curdled control-obsessed malignant narcissists off world. In short, you were about to become our problem. But now there is no problem! Now there is a process.
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They climbed their ladders to wheedle and prune the trees into holiness
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"Some who deserve failure do not achieve it,” he sniffed. “Some who deserve nothing are given the world.
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“First Law of Heroics.” The Monaciello grinned up at a confused September. “Someone has to tell you it’s impossible, or the Quest can’t go on."
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But it is difficult for men to disbelieve a woman who insists that she wishes to serve them, and he nodded assent.
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A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks
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She still longed for the best heights of magic, to see dragons and mermaids, to see the naked world.
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Sometimes, magic is like that. It lands on your head like a piano, a stupid, ancient, unfunny joke, and you spend the rest of your life picking sharps and flats out of your hair.
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It is in the nature of winds to Snatch and Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away.
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"This is some hard-core, triple-X, keep-it-in-the-back-room-under-a-curtain, Alice in Wonderland action is what this is,” Decibel said with total delight.
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Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
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So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.
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I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.
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I shall be as brave as a my Toad, he thought, for my Toad never hides under the bed when she is afraid of lightning or bats. She sticks out her tongue and eats them.
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So you don’t love him. Why would you look for love with a man? How could a man ever understand you?
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September waited. She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.
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Where’s the nerdy shy Predator scientist who figured out how to build a spaceship while all the big jock Predators were down the pub ripping one another’s spines out, eh?
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When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it is brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.
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Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
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Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs.