Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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.
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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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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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I sell Damascus steel, folded and intricate, dug up from the earth, practically useless, desirable only to lovers of the arcane, the beautiful, the old. No
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Some switches must be flipped, and some children cannot help turning off to on and on to off, just to see what will happen.
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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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It is in the nature of winds to Snatch and Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away.
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Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
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Fairyland is a very Scientifick place. We subscribe to all the best journals.
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How else are you supposed to deal with people who like terrible things? Hit them with a shovel till they stop, that’s how.
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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.
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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 said: I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.
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All coral in every world think of Australia the way that you and I think of Mesopotamia - it is the ancestral paradise of their civilization and they send it Valentines each February.
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"I think I look a little like a pumpkin,” whispered September, secretly delighted. “I’m all green and orange.
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For a witch is nothing without her Spoon.
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But the Tsar of Death and the Tsar of Life greatly feared one another, for Death is surrounded by souls, and is never lonely, and the Tsar of Life had hidden his death away in a place deeper than secrets, and more secret than depth.
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Will Hilt to hand yet be restored? Take me up, thy mother's sword.
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But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
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But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.
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It’s the most marvelous and terrible thing in the world. Everyone, but everyone, is pretending to be someone else.
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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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Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist.
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I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin.