Catherynne M. Valente Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Morning, Feet, Soldier

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Hurt, Men

  4 Copy quote

• In his own country, Death can be kind.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Country, Be Kind, Kind

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Devil, Habit

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

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• It’s been me all along,” said September slowly. “Me who gave up my shadow, me who went down into Fairyland-Below and Fairyland-Lower-Than-That to wake up the Prince. Me who shot the poor Minotaur. You oughtn’t just hand the whole business over the moment a Prince comes on the scene. I’ve got to see it through, don’t you see? The Hollow Queen is hollow because she’s missing the part of her that’s me. We’ve got to come together again. And he can’t do a thing about that.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Queens, Hands, Together Again

  8 Copy quote

• Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Mourning, Mindfulness, Today

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

  13 Copy quote

• He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Confused, Mind, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Sweet, Home, Mean

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.50, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in it's changing and change with it.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Regret, Home, Color

  Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.75, Feiwel & Friends

  10 Copy quote

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