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And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
Catherynne M. Valente -
I was born a girl in a world of Branwells, but I shall be more than I am meant.
Catherynne M. Valente
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At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.
Catherynne M. Valente -
But old women faced certain dangers in Fairyland, such as breaking a hip while riding a wild velocipede, or having everyone do what you say just because you had wrinkles.
Catherynne M. Valente -
Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
Catherynne M. Valente -
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?
Catherynne M. Valente -
A father is nowhere near as valuable as a spoon.
Catherynne M. Valente -
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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“Oh!" cried the young man. "A little deaf child! How sweet! We should adopt her and teach her to write symphonies. She'll be all the rage in town. I'll buy her a powdered wig and a tricorne!
Catherynne M. Valente -
Memory is like that. It alters itself so that girls are always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.
Catherynne M. Valente -
Don't you know how far women stretch?
Catherynne M. Valente -
As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.
Catherynne M. Valente -
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
Catherynne M. Valente -
She still longed for the best heights of magic, to see dragons and mermaids, to see the naked world.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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."
Catherynne M. Valente -
And hell, sometimes the best thing is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother. There’s power in that, if you’re after power.
Catherynne M. Valente -
What was a person, if not the things they knew and the face they wore?
Catherynne M. Valente -
It's like Goguenar's Fourth General Unkillable Fact says: Everyone's always saying love is the element that binds the universe together, but that's a load of bollocks; It's convenience.
Catherynne M. Valente -
We hold demonstrations and civil wars when inequities are discovered.
Catherynne M. Valente -
Brine shrimp were not overly talkative, squirrels failed to make significant headway in the fields of technology and mathematics, and seagulls were clearly unburdened by reason, feeling, or remorse.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.
Catherynne M. Valente -
How long was it, between the time when you were happy, and the time when you wanted to kill him?
Catherynne M. Valente -
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.
Catherynne M. Valente -
She drank like a Czar and sang like a broken squeezebox and danced like the Sugarplum Fairy cutting loose at last
Catherynne M. Valente