Catherynne M. Valente - Deathless (2011)

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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
Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

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
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
I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.

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
She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.

Catherynne M. Valente
Do you know, Masha, how revelation comes? Like death. So sudden, though you knew all along it must occur. A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.

Catherynne M. Valente
Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share. That's lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.

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
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
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
Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.

Catherynne M. Valente
When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up." "Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day.

Catherynne M. Valente
I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.

Catherynne M. Valente
I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

Catherynne M. Valente
No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

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
Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?

Catherynne M. Valente