Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.

Catherynne M. Valente
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
And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.

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
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Catherynne M. Valente
I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

Catherynne M. Valente
There's more than one way between your world and ours. There's the changeling road, and there's the Ravishing, and there's those that Stumble through a gap in the hedgerows or a mushroom ring or a tornado or a wardrobe full of winter coats.

Catherynne M. Valente
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
However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness.

Catherynne M. Valente
But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.

Catherynne M. Valente
You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.

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

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
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.

Catherynne M. Valente
Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.

Catherynne M. Valente
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
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