Top 100 Catherynne M Valente Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies - and those bodies were so dear to me!
Catherynne M Valente
#4. All stories must end so, with the next tale winking out of the corners of the last pages, promising more, promising moonlight and dancing and revels, if only you will come back when spring comes again.
Catherynne M Valente
#5. She must have cried for some secret amphibian reason. Then her dress caught on fire while they danced, and there was a mess, but that's neither here nor there.
Catherynne M Valente
#6. Bosses run things. The rest of us get run. It's the only rank that matters these days. You can dress it up as baronies or boyars or caliphates, but that's just sticking lace and ribbons on the dinosaur and hoping he'll take you to town. Is you a boss or isn't you? That's about the size of it.
Catherynne M Valente
#7. You can tell all that about me from your measuring tape?'
'Well, I use the metric system, It's the only way to get really exact numbers.
Catherynne M Valente
#8. 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
#11. It's in our blood - we heard their distresses like a rung bell in our bones.
Catherynne M Valente
#12. Now, in the Kingdom of School, to be asked into another child's room is like being asked inside their heart.
Catherynne M Valente
#13. September suddenly realized something. "But Ell, Orrery begins with O! How can you know so much about it?"
The Wyverary soared high, his neck stretching into a long red ribbon, full of words and pies and relief and flying.
"I'm growing up!" he cried.
Catherynne M Valente
#14. But something older and wiser within her said, Some things are for hiding and for keeping.
Catherynne M Valente
#15. But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
Catherynne M Valente
#16. It was only a dream. Sometimes they say that, at the end of stories, in the land where Milo was born. And then I woke up - it was only a dream.
Stories here do not end like that. I cannot wake up. I do not sleep.
Catherynne M Valente
#17. I did not see the appeal of a wife. We had never had one before. She would not be half as interesting as our buffalo.
Catherynne M Valente
#18. I am here to tell you
We are all of us just as mighty as planets - and you too,
We'll let you in, we've got stalwart to spare
But you might have to sleep on the floor.
Catherynne M Valente
#21. Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.
Catherynne M Valente
#22. 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
#25. All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.
Catherynne M Valente
#26. All things built with tax money are beautiful: so we must think or go mad.
Catherynne M Valente
#27. Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall.
Catherynne M Valente
#29. Zelda was winter's best dame: pale and dark with a shimmer of Christmas in her eye, a flash of New Year's in her laugh.
Catherynne M Valente
#31. There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will be all hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.
Catherynne M Valente
#32. Strictly speaking,' said the King of Fairies between mouthfuls, 'I'm leasing you this food on a limited, bite-by-bite basis and a generous payment-deferral plan. I'd have thought someone would have told you about Fairy food. You always pay, lad. I'm not running a charity delicatessen.
Catherynne M Valente
#33. ... That's what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home - someday, somehow. ...
Catherynne M Valente
#34. Be nice to Fairyland. She is old and tender of heart and when her feelings are hurt, she cries volcanoes.
Catherynne M Valente
#35. Do you know what a thirteen-year-old girl can do when she is alone and frightened and believes she is right?
Catherynne M Valente
#38. September frowned; she probably did need to hear things which were cruel but true. If they were true it did not matter if they were cruel, even if all her mistakes were laid out before her like rings in a jeweler's box.
Catherynne M Valente
#41. God is another way of talking about the power to break things, that's all. When you mean to break a goblet or a bone, well, just do it and be done. But when the things to be broken get big enough you have to start talking about God.
Catherynne M Valente
#42. Breaking things heals a great many hurts. This is why children do it so often.
Catherynne M Valente
#43. After so long keeping to herself and tending her secret quietly, all these words just bubbled up out of her her like cool golden champagne.
Catherynne M Valente
#44. A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which you'll learn all about when you're older and don't care anymore.
Catherynne M Valente
#45. There are no tigers for us, just a city, waiting, and it loves us, in whatever ways a city can love.
Catherynne M Valente
#46. Because it's my fault, you see. I did it. And you must always clean up your own messes, even when your messes look just like you and curtsy very viciously when what they mean is, I am going to make trouble forever and ever.
Catherynne M Valente
#48. You took on a Quest, which is a thing only men - and exceedingly stupid men, usually - do.
Catherynne M Valente
#49. She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.
Catherynne M Valente
#51. I do believe everyone in Fairyland-Below is royalty!" September exclaimed. "Queens and Princes and Vicereines and Emperors - it's like visiting Europe!
Catherynne M Valente
#52. In a city by the sea that was certainly never called anything so bourgeois as St. Petersburg, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street.
Catherynne M Valente
#53. And there's nothing wrong with spinsters, anyway. They have nice cats and little bowls full of candy. Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Newitz are the kindest ladies you'll ever meet, and they have nips of whiskey in their tea like cowboys.
Catherynne M Valente
#54. 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
#55. I suppose if you have ten children one of them might go into government, which is the same as losing a child really.
Catherynne M Valente
#56. Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of course, they often have a good deal of trouble with the Quiet.
Catherynne M Valente
#57. Just about every science whiz can tell you how he or she took apart the TV or the radio when they were kids just to see how it worked. To see what the world was made of. Well, when I was a kid, I took apart fairy tales to see how they worked. To see what the world was made of.
Catherynne M Valente
#58. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
Catherynne M Valente
#59. Her father's shadow looked sadly down at her. You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won't forget your war either.
Catherynne M Valente
#60. I said: I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.
Catherynne M Valente
#61. Is she very terrible?"
The Green Wind frowned into his brambly beard. "All little girls are terrible, " he admitted finally, "but the Marquess, at least, has a very fine hat.
Catherynne M Valente
#62. 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
#63. Today I shall be a wicked murderous tyrant and crush something nice under my heel.
Catherynne M Valente
#64. If she was in a teaching mood she wasn't in a hitting mood. Like sneezing and keeping your eyes open, Mrs. H couldn't do both at once.
Catherynne M Valente
#65. We think ... that girls ought to sing. They ought to sing, and dance while they're singing. But we are not girls, and so can be almost certain that we know nothing about the matter.
Catherynne M Valente
#66. Over in the refrigerated section hang lies told so long ago and so often that they turned into the truth and get taught in history books.
Catherynne M Valente
#67. 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
#68. He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.
Catherynne M Valente
#69. Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life.
Catherynne M Valente
#70. Truly, Autumn is my season," the scarlet beast chorted. "Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.
Catherynne M Valente
#72. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted.
Catherynne M Valente
#73. Men, they feel nothing like what we must endure. You have to make room in yourself for him, and that is the same in a house as in a body. See that you keep some rooms in yourself, locked up tight.
Catherynne M Valente
#74. Remember this when you are queen," said the vintovnik solemnly. "That I went into the dark for, and scared an old woman half to death.
Catherynne M Valente
#75. I'm not afraid of you!' The wombat yelled. 'I saw you get stuck in the washing machine once. Round and round you went! Who's afraid of something that can't defeat a rinse cycle?
Catherynne M Valente
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. Temperament, you'll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat.
Catherynne M Valente
#81. And Miss Oleander Coy had herself a blue mouth. Little stains at the edges of her raspberry lips where she put her pen when she was thinking, which was always.
Catherynne M Valente
#82. When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.
Catherynne M Valente
#83. I think I look a little like a pumpkin," whispered September, secretly delighted. "I'm all green and orange.
Catherynne M Valente
#84. Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn't it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?
Catherynne M Valente
#85. Where I come from, some people wear fine suits just to ride on an Aeroplane - I suspect they think if they impress it enough it will be sure to carry them safely.
Catherynne M Valente
#86. I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.
Catherynne M Valente
#87. 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
#88. Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me something different to light a fire under me.
Catherynne M Valente
#89. 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
#90. Finally, she said: "I'm lonely" - it's weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can't help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you're confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: "I'm lonely," and they ate her in the street.
Catherynne M Valente
#91. In the beginning there was Dust, and in the end there will be Dust, and in the middle there is Dust, Dust, Dust!
Catherynne M Valente
#92. In my mind I know the name of an ocean the size of everything that was. My mouth can only call it death.
Catherynne M Valente
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.
Catherynne M Valente
#96. Brother," he wept, "my heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it."
"Tscha!" said the Tsar of Birds. "Life is like that.
Catherynne M Valente
#98. they leave when it's over, exeunt, pursued by a bear with an empty porridge bowl. If
Catherynne M Valente
#99. No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings.
Catherynne M Valente
#100. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris.
Catherynne M Valente
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