Quotes from 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.

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.

Coffee is a kind of magic you can drink.

But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like.

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.

her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.

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.

Of late, she had felt coldness in herself, and though she feared it, she loved it too, for it made her strong.

Night poured itself down my throat. Night was my wine and my meat. Night wed me and bedded me, widowed me and murdered me and resurrected me whole a thousand times over with each hour.

A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.

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.

The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.

How else are you supposed to deal with people who like terrible things? Hit them with a shovel till they stop, that's how.

Never assume that a woman is wicked simply because she is ugly and behaves unfavorably towards you. It is unbecoming behavior for a Prince.

After all, in fairy tales, there was only one thing to do. In every story with a long sleep and a waking in it. An easy thing, a pretty thing. Standard currency.

Mug your destiny in an alley and punch it until it gives you what you want

Don't worry," Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. "My old bones will follow yours soon enough.

We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.

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.

Love rarely waits for permission.

But the trouble is, I do want to be surprised. I want to choose. I broke the heart of my fate so that I could choose. I never chose; I only saw a little girl who looked like me standing on a gear at the end of the world and laughing, and that's not choosing, not really. Wouldn't you rather I chose you? Wouldn't you rather I picked our future out of all the others anyone could have?