Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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Nobody came without their sequins roaring.
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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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Oh, come on, you must know ‘Leave It Black.’ I see a black door and I’m extremely satisfied with how it looks?
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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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He had not guessed how much of the body of a Quest was simply walking.
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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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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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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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Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.
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War is not for winning, Masha," sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.
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Didn't you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman's house.
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There is no end and no beginning. There is only we two, alone in the dark, for always.
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Perhaps my philosophy is not so sophisticated. It goes: Come inside. I love you. A Whelk's love will grow as big as it's allowed.
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Her heart ached as though a knife had quietly slipped between her ribs.
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After so long keeping to herself and tending her secret quietly, all these words just bubbled up out of her her like cool golden champagne.
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You have to be able to see the world as a whole to bear it - to see the Queerness that moves in every bit of Fairyland, how it threads through every heart and field, how we are all bound together up in the Weird Well of the World.
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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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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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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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And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
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I heard there’s fire in hell, but I’ll bet the devil just hands you a bucket and tells you to get moving, this place ain’t gonna clean itself.
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Don't worry, my little lump of rock. Everybody gets a chance to choose. Or else where would irony come from?
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She was determined that I hold this thing inside me like a heart - something irremovable and constant.
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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?