Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

A library is never complete. That's the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.

Catherynne M. Valente
I'm not lost, because I haven't any idea where to go that I might get lost on the way to. I'd like to get lost, because then I'd know where I was going, you see.

Catherynne M. Valente
Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.

Catherynne M. Valente
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
The storm ate up September's cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

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
It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.

Catherynne M. Valente
I wouldn't even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you'd do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.

Catherynne M. Valente
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

Catherynne M. Valente
Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower—" At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes. "Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
Her heart was bruised by the kiss, smashed and surprised and unsettled by it. September thought kisses were all nice, sweet things asked for gently and given gladly. It had happened so fast and sharp it had taken her breath. Perhaps she had done it wrong, somehow. She put the kiss away firmly to think about later. Instead, she smiled at him and pulled a carefree mask over her face.

Catherynne M. Valente
To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them.

Catherynne M. Valente
Someone ought to write a novel about me, said Lebedeva loftily. I shouldn't care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can't abide a poor liar.

Catherynne M. Valente
Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. I have come for the girl in the window, he said, and his eyes filled with tears

Catherynne M. Valente
You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".

Catherynne M. Valente
Relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.

Catherynne M. Valente
Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention!

Catherynne M. Valente