Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Sell your soul and half your shoes for a glass of gin.
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Everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly unending, white-hot, existential, logistical, mostly mundane troubles of their own day-to-day lives.
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Her heart ached as though a knife had quietly slipped between her ribs.
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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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But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
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Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
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“Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
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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.
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You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.
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Be nice to Fairyland. She is old and tender of heart and when her feelings are hurt, she cries volcanoes.
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Being the oldest sometimes meant being everyone's boss, but mostly, it meant being everyone's pack mule.
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How I adore you, Marya. How well I chose. Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.
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And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.
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Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.
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Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships.
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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.
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We must not dwell on what we were in our salad days when soup days steam now upon the table!
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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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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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No one says a word that has not been spoken a thousand times before, a thousand thousand times, and even the first of those was a repetition of words that came before.
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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 not nihilism is there's really no point to anything.
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It is good that you ruined your face, because it brought you to me, but also because beautiful women rarely work strong magic.