Catherynne M. Valente Quotes
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.
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.
Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.
But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.
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.
She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.
Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.
And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.
That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.
A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.
She who invented words, and yet does not speak; she who brings dreams and visions, yet does not sleep; she who swallows the storm, yet knows nothing of rain or wind. I speak for her; I am her own.
Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.
But this is a story, and in a story there is always someone beautiful enough." - 'The Girl with Two Skins' from A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects
Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.
... 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.
Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.
You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.
A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.
Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.
The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
It appeals to the higher nature of the self to put aside food which once lived - I do not consider myself food, why should I ask all other creatures to consider themselves so?
This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.
