Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

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

Catherynne M. Valente
Oh, but Masha, can't you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

Catherynne M. Valente
Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.

Catherynne M. Valente
You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.

Catherynne M. Valente
I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting.

Catherynne M. Valente
When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.

Catherynne M. Valente
And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.

Catherynne M. Valente
What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Catherynne M. Valente
At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.

Catherynne M. Valente
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
That's what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It's practically what they're for.

Catherynne M. Valente
I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.

Catherynne M. Valente
The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.

Catherynne M. Valente
You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn't behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.

Catherynne M. Valente
It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.

Catherynne M. Valente
I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

Catherynne M. Valente
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
It's saying no. That's your first hint that something's alive. It says no. That's how you know a baby is starting to turn into a person. They run around saying no all day, throwing their aliveness at everything to see what it'll stick to. You can't say no if you don't have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn't even want to. No is the heart of thinking.

Catherynne M. Valente
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

Catherynne M. Valente
Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

Catherynne M. Valente
She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand.

Catherynne M. Valente
We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.

Catherynne M. Valente
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.

Catherynne M. Valente
No one is now what they were before the war. There's just no getting any of it back.

Catherynne M. Valente