Catherynne M. Valente quotes
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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 -
Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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 it's changing and change with it.
-- 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 -
Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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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 -
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
-- 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 -
Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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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 -
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 -
Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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Here! 'Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.' Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: 'Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.' Now that's quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn't ask for better. It's downright plain-spoken!
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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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 -
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 -
You know, in Fairyland-Above they said that the underworld was full of devils and dragons. But it isn’t so at all! Folk are just folk, wherever you go, and it’s only a nasty sort of person who thinks a body’s a devil just because they come from another country and have different notions. It’s wild and quick and bold down here, but I like wild things and quick things and bold things, too.
-- 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 -
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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 -
Once more September marveled that even the Dodo knew what she wanted to be when she was grown. She simply could not think what she herself might do. September expected that destinies, which is how she thought of professions, simply landed upon one like a crown, and ever after no one questioned or fretted over it, being sure of one’s own use in the world. It was only that somehow her crown had not yet appeared. She did hope it would hurry up.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.
-- 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 -
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 -
The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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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 -
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 -
Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret.
-- 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 -
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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 -
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 -
In his own country, Death can be kind.
-- 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 -
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The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
One of the many quotes on love..."Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool; something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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... 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 -
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 -
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 -
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I can't imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It's not done! You don't go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn't go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
She who invented words, and yet does not speak; she who brings dreams and visions, yet does not sleep; she who swallows the storm, yet knows nothing of rain or wind. I speak for her; I am her own.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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 -
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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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 -
You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
All things are strange which are worth knowing.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed voices, as if the words could make things happen just by being spoken, as if they were fairy words, and had to be handled just so.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire—well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are the ones that have to make the journey, fight the monster, kneel before whomever is big on kneeling these days. Bones do the work for the heart's grand plans. Bones know what you need. Hearts only know want.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Remember this when you are queen,†he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
-- 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 -
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 -
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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 -
We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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 -
Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. â€I have come for the girl in the window,†he said, and his eyes filled with tears
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
-- 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 -
All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
After love, no one is what they were before.
-- 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 -
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Someone ought to write a novel about me,
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
I'm not lost, because I haven't any idea where to go that I might get lost on the way to. I'd like to get lost, because then I'd know where I was going, you see.
-- 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 -
Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I've always had enough, even if my enough and your enough are as different as an elephant and a minaret.
-- 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 -
Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Do you know, we're right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can't get back to. I don't even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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You're not in love if you keep your own heart bricked up behind your bones. You're only playing.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, much more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn't converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
I am freedom and I will eat your heart
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire — where the old world looked at a woman alone and immortal and said: she must long to die, I have tried to say: look at her live!
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.
-- 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 -
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 -
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