Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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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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We must not dwell on what we were in our salad days when soup days steam now upon the table!
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She always gave the impression of having accidentally wandered in from a mad scientist’s conference, and felt rather desperate to get back.
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...For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.
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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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Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
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If there are spells, they have a right to weave.
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Memory is like that. It alters itself so that girls are always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.
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There a difference between having been coded to present a vast set of standardized responses to certain human facial, vocal, and linguistic states and having evolved to exhibit response B to input A in order to bring about a desired social result?
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You’re better off - theatrical folk are nothing but a bundle of monologues and anxiety headaches.
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When you are this hungry, you cannot even remember who you used to be, she whispered. Who you might have been, if not for the hunger.
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So a half-breed goatsnake, a Yith, and a Ghast walk into a bar.
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We all have someone we think shines so much more than we do that we are not even a moon to their sun, but a dead little rock floating in space next to their gold and their blaze.
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The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner.
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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.
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When I grew a little older, and had suitors, I demanded from them rings from the bottom of the sea, or a sword from the depths of the desert, or a golden bough and a thick golden fleece, too, before I allowed even one kiss.
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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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I began my life as a character in my father's films.
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And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules until you are ready to rule yourself.
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Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his poket and he knows your name, Marya Morevna.
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The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
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"Don't trust metaphors," the wombat snorted. "If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!"
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Pandemic, Pangaea, Panacea, Panoply. Those were all big words, to be sure, but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.
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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.