Catherynne M. Valente - Heart Quotes

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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
It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.

Catherynne M. Valente
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.

Catherynne M. Valente
You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

Catherynne M. Valente
But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.

Catherynne M. Valente
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
For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.

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

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
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
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
Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.

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

Catherynne M. Valente
A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

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
September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That's how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you're tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.

Catherynne M. Valente
For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.

Catherynne M. Valente
Her heart ached as though a knife had quietly slipped between her ribs.

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
Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.

Catherynne M. Valente