Catherynne M. Valente Quotes - Page 2

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I think that one morning, the Papess woke in her tower, and her blankets were so warm, and the sun was so golden, she could not bear it. I think she woke, and dressed, and washed her face in cold water, and rubbed her shaven head. I think she walked among her sisters, and for the first time saw that they were so beautiful, and she loved them. I think she woke up one morning of all her mornings, and found that her heart was as white as a silkworm, and the sun was clear as glass on her brow, and she believed then that she could live, and hold peace in her hand like a pearl.

Catherynne M. Valente

Beautiful, Morning, Heart

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Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.

Catherynne M. Valente

Should, Ought, Survived

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Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.

Catherynne M. Valente

Animal, Talking, Fool

Catherynne M. Valente (2015). “The Boy Who Lost Fairyland”, p.158, Macmillan

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This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

Catherynne M. Valente

Pain, Mean, Heart

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I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.

Catherynne M. Valente

Communication, Simple, Thinking

"The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection". Book edited by Gardner Dozois, July 3, 2012.

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I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.

Catherynne M. Valente

Wish, Expected, Wish You The Best

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.18, Macmillan

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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.

Catherynne M. Valente

Hurt, Men

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What came before has dissolved from me, lost like milk teeth. But I think, rather, that it has always been as it is, and there was never a beforethis nor will there be an afternow. I am accepting. This is not a thing to be solved, or conquered, or destroyed. It is. I am. We are. We conjugate together in darkness, plotting against each other, the Labyrinth to eat me and I to eat it, each to swallow the hard, black opium of the other. We hold orange petals beneath our tongues and seethe. It has always been so. It grinds against me and I bite into its skin.

Catherynne M. Valente

Thinking, Orange, Darkness

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These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.

Catherynne M. Valente

Girl, Grief, Book

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I’m a monster,” said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. “Everyone says so.” The Minotaur glanced up at her. “So are we all, dear,” said the Minotaur kindly. “The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.

Catherynne M. Valente

Shadow, Monsters, Towns

Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.527, Macmillan

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Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being.

Catherynne M. Valente

Running, Distance, Skills

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You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.

Catherynne M. Valente

Waiting, Tears, Irony

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.313, Macmillan

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A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

Catherynne M. Valente

Blood, Color, Law

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I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.

Catherynne M. Valente

Devil, Habit

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.112, Macmillan

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I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

Catherynne M. Valente

Mother, Son, Two

Catherynne M. Valente (2012). “Deathless”, p.163, Hachette UK

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In his own country, Death can be kind.

Catherynne M. Valente

Country, Be Kind, Kind

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.79, Macmillan

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Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

Catherynne M. Valente

Mourning, Mindfulness, Today

Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.273, Macmillan

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Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.

Catherynne M. Valente

Love, Song, Lonely

Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.124, Macmillan

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You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.

Catherynne M. Valente

Running, Thinking, Doe

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.222, Macmillan

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Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.

Catherynne M. Valente

Skeletons, Needs, Looks

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After love, no one is what they were before.

Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.277, Macmillan

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September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed voices, as if the words could make things happen just by being spoken, as if they were fairy words, and had to be handled just so.

Catherynne M. Valente

Girl, School, Voice

Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.325, Macmillan

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She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.

Catherynne M. Valente

Heart, Stubborn, Want

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.282, Macmillan

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Woman! Come out! I have—" She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.

Catherynne M. Valente

Admitting, Grass, Rescue

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Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.

Catherynne M. Valente

Thinking, Laughing, Temptation

Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland--For a Little While: A Tor.Com Original”, p.15, Macmillan

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Born: May 5, 1979
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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