Catherynne M Valente Quotes & Sayings

She was a vengeful goddess and her will was absolute. — Catherynne M Valente

That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night. — 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

The future is a messy, motley business, little girl. — Catherynne M Valente

I look at you, Masha, and it is like drinking cold water. I look at you and it is like my throat being cut. — Catherynne M Valente

Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist. — Catherynne M Valente

But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs. — Catherynne M Valente

It's been me all along," said September slowly. "Me who gave up my shadow, me who went down into Fairyland-Below and Fairyland-Lower-Than-That to wake up the Prince. Me who shot the poor Minotaur. You oughtn't just hand the whole business over the moment a Prince comes on the scene. I've got to see it through, don't you see? The Hollow Queen is hollow because she's missing the part of her that's me. We've got to come together again. And he can't do a thing about that. — Catherynne M Valente

One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb high trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown. — Catherynne M Valente

We spent a century closed up within four walls
and a roof.
We are claustrophobic.
We prefer the sun and the wind and the sea
though it bites some of us
who are made of metal, and tears papery hearts. — Catherynne M Valente

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

they leave when it's over, exeunt, pursued by a bear with an empty porridge bowl. If — Catherynne M Valente

Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either. — Catherynne M Valente

The villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne. — Catherynne M Valente

She is sad. She does not speak Japanese. Her husband went to the desert months and months ago. Every day she goes to the market and brings back chocolate, a peach, and a salmon rice-ball for her dinner. She sits and eats and stares at the wall. Sometimes she watches television. Sometimes she walks three miles to Blue Street to look at necklaces in the window that she wishes someone would buy for her. Sometimes she walks along the pier to see the sunken bicycles, pinged into ruin by invisible arrows of battleship-sonar, crusted over with rust and coral. She likes to pet people's dogs as they walk them. That is her whole life. What should she dream of?"
"Something better. — Catherynne M Valente

You have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy. — Catherynne M Valente

If Fairyland-Below is Fairyland's shadow, what is the shadow of Fairyland-Below? What's under the underworld?"
Ell laughed like thunder rolling somewhere far off. "I'm afraid it's underworlds all the way down, my dearest, darling flying ace. — Catherynne M Valente

You know how questing goes. You can't explain it to anyone else; it would be like telling them your dreams. — Catherynne M Valente

Love rarely waits for permission. — Catherynne M Valente

True names," said September wonderingly. "These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don't come and they call again but you still don't come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course, you have to come, and right quick. Because true names have power, like Lye said. But I never told anyone my true name. The Green Wind told me not to. I didn't understand what he meant, but I do now. — Catherynne M Valente

For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in its changing and change with it.' Lye — Catherynne M Valente

Where there's a labyrinth, there's a minotaur, and vice versa! I can't imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. — Catherynne M Valente

I didn't want to do my mathematics homework back home. Or mend the fence or mind the chickens. But I did it anyway. Just because a person doesn't want to do a thing doesn't mean they ought to shirk. — Catherynne M Valente

It's a secret and if you tell a secret the secret comes alive and can never be kept safe at home again. — 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

Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life. — 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

Our parents tell us the story of our beginning and they have total control over it
they know they've changed it, and we know they've changed it, but we just let them. They massage the details to reflect who we are now, so that there will be a sense to it: you are this because that. We gave you a blanket with birdies on it and now you're a pilot, how lovely! All so that we think of ourselves as being in ... not just a story, but a good story. One written in full command of their craft. Someone who abides by the contract with the audience, even if the audience is us. Everyone loves a system. Everyone relaxes. — Catherynne M Valente

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

I opened my door and everything they had for me was tainted because the land of Used-to-Be is just full of ghosts starving for your breath. — Catherynne M Valente

But we had young turnips and mustard greens in our befuddled stomach that day, and these things make bravery. — Catherynne M Valente

She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can't ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again - on principle. — Catherynne M Valente

There is no end and no beginning. There is only we two, alone in the dark, for always. — Catherynne M Valente

As you swallow the cow's tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man. — Catherynne M Valente

We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive. This is Russia and it is 1952. What else would you call hell? — Catherynne M Valente

Don't you ever feel
like you're just
a story someone is telling
about someone like you? — 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

She is ... " Death turned her head, considering. "She is like a party dress I wear when I want to impress visiting dignitaries. Like your friend Betsy, I too am a Terrible Engine. I too have occasional need of awe. But between us, I think, there is no need of finery. — Catherynne M Valente

Who am i, really? What does any of it mean? i'm so afraid someday everyone will see that i'm just an imposter, a fake, among all the real and gorgeous godheads.
- — 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

Being unable to retrace our steps in Time, we decided to move forward in Space. Shall we never be able to glide back up the stream of Time, and peep into the old home, and gaze on the old faces? Perhaps when the phonograph and the kinesigraph are perfected, and some future worker has solved the problem of colour photography, our descendants will be able to deceive themselves with something very like it: but it will be but a barren husk, a soulless phantasm and nothing more. "Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!" - Wordsworth Donisthorpe, inventor of the kinesigraph camera — 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

They were all whispers now, the two of them, conspirators and thieves. — Catherynne M Valente

But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it. — Catherynne M Valente

Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield. — Catherynne M Valente

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory. — Catherynne M Valente

Thing is, just because you make a body shiver don't make it yours. — Catherynne M Valente

It's in our blood - we heard their distresses like a rung bell in our bones. — 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

I just want to know...if I am special,' finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. 'In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it's because she's special, because she's smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and . . . I don't know that I'm any of those things. I don't even know that I'm as ill-tempered as all that. I'm not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl's house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn't mean to choose me at all, because I'm not like storybook girls. I'm short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn't even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird. — Catherynne M Valente

When you argue with verve in your saddlebags, you are extremely alive. That is why you yell and holler and shake your fist - could there be anything sweeter than convincing someone to see the world your way? What else is talking for, or jokes, or stories, or battles? The Loudest Magic, and how I loved it. — Catherynne M Valente

Things which are gone in the morning: sleep, darkness, grief, the moon. Women. Dreams. — 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

I sell Damascus steel, folded and intricate, dug up from the earth, practically useless, desirable only to lovers of the arcane, the beautiful, the old. No — Catherynne M Valente

Shadow Physicks are fearfully complicated. A. Amblygonite has no idea. — Catherynne M Valente

... That's what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home - someday, somehow. ... — Catherynne M Valente

She had saved herself for this, stored her love within her so that this book, which could not possibly have been written for any purpose but to crawl inside her and dwell there like a holy thing, so that this book would not be ashamed of her profligacy. — Catherynne M Valente

Iago shrugged his furry shoulders. As you like. Saves me the work of picking the lock with my incisor. — Catherynne M Valente

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

Wife sounded like something exciting, something daring, something a bit scoundrelly, like pirate or bandit. And they were bandits, of course. — Catherynne M Valente

I don't want to be a Princess," she said finally. "You can't make me be one." She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing. — Catherynne M Valente

I knew his face when he came. Of course I knew it. Even a Star dreams. I have been dreaming a long time, and I watched the glittering cord of that man's life spool out until it intersected with mine, and how the sparks lit the grass at my feet! I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other. But Stars, you know, are fixed in their courses, and we can no more change the throttling paces of orbit than a rabbit can shorten its ears. I saw his cord lashing and snapping in the dark, and could do nothing. — Catherynne M Valente

Don't worry, my little lump of rock. Everybody gets a chance to choose. Or else where would irony come from? — Catherynne M Valente

The Party is a wonderful, marvelous invention, and it has taught us wonderful, marvelous things - chiefly, that we can cause more trouble with less effort by filing complaints than by breaking teacups. — Catherynne M Valente

We were just holes, after all, holes filled up with light, and deep in our secret hearts we worried that we were an accident, — Catherynne M Valente

Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them."
"They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? 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. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box. — Catherynne M Valente

A choice is like a jigsaw puzzle, darling troll. Your worries are the corner pieces, and your hopes are the edge pieces, and you, Hawthorn, dearest of boys, are the middle pieces, all funny-shaped and stubborn. But the picture, the picture was there all along, just waiting for you to get on with it. — Catherynne M Valente

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

It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it. — Catherynne M Valente

Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs. — 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

Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous. — Catherynne M Valente

September laughed a little. She tried to make it sound light and happy, as though it were all over now and how funny it was, when you think about it, that simply not having another person by you could hurt so. But it did not come out quite right; there was a heaviness in her laughing like ice at the bottom of a glass. She still missed Saturday, yet he was standing right beside her! Missing him had become a part of her, like a hard, dark bone, and she needed so much more than a few words to let it go. In all this while, she had spent more time missing Saturday than seeing him. — Catherynne M Valente

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

In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her. — Catherynne M Valente

She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone. — Catherynne M Valente

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike. — Catherynne M Valente

But what have I to prove? It should be you wrapped up in Zmey Gorinich's coils, proving that you are not a monster, that you are worthy of me!"
"Have I not proven it? Have I not taken you out of your starving city and fed you, clothed you in fine things, taught you how to listen and how to speak, brought you to a place where you are a mistress, a tsarevna adored and worshipped, made love to, your skin dusted with jewels? Did I not dower myself? Did I not come to you on my knees with a kingdom in my hand? — Catherynne M Valente

For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play in our worlds with any frequency. The problem for us is getting people to read and care about our books that much in the first place. — Catherynne M Valente

However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely. — Catherynne M Valente

I shall be as brave as a my Toad, he thought, for my Toad never hides under the bed when she is afraid of lightning or bats. She sticks out her tongue and eats them. — 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 stepmother is like a bullet you can't dig out. She fires true and she fires hot and she fires so quick that her metal hits your body before you even know there's a fight on. — Catherynne M Valente

These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair. — Catherynne M Valente

Everyone Is Looking for a Book Strong Enough to Change Them. — Catherynne M Valente

I won't be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction. — Catherynne M Valente

All time is mean young man. It takes and does not give, it rushes when you wish it would linger and drags when you wish is would fly. It flows sullenly, only in one direction, when it might take a thousand turns. You cannot get anything back once time has taken it. Time cheats and steals and lies and kills. If anyone could arrest it, they would have time behind bars faster than you can check your watch. — Catherynne M Valente

The body does the living; the shadow does the dreaming. — Catherynne M Valente

Check your pockets, my chimney-child. — Catherynne M Valente

After love, no one is what they were before. — 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

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose. — Catherynne M Valente

And when funny things happen, you just have to go along, don't you? Because they might never happen again and you'll have missed the joke of it, missed the fun, and then when you're old and your kittens ask you what you did when the world had its glad rags on, you won't have nothing to say, will you? — Catherynne M Valente

September looked down at her black silks. Everyone saw her as a Criminal. They did it because of how she looked. But that was the whole purpose of clothes, she supposed. Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day. Even folk who wore plain overalls every day and didn't comb their hair and knew more about cattle breeds than fashion were telling a story: I am a person who doesn't know or care about fashion because those aren't things worth knowing or caring about. — Catherynne M Valente

I have always been delighted when told there was a piece of fanfic inspired by a book of mine floating about. I don't read it for legal reasons, but I'm thrilled to know it's there. Someone cared. Someone loved it enough to spend their free time writing about it for free. — Catherynne M Valente

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing. — Catherynne M Valente

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

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

In my experience, folk find it nigh on impossible to call a thing what it is. It — Catherynne M Valente

It is my dearest hope that one day I shall be the one to discover the GUT-the Grand Unified Tale, the one which will bind together all our Theorems and Laws, leaving out not one Orphan Girl or Youngest Son or Cup of Life and Death. Not one Descent or Ascent, not one Riddle or Puzzle or Trick. One perfect golden map that can guide any soul to its desire and back again. I will be the one to do it, I know it. I hope I know it. I know I hope it. — Catherynne M Valente