Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

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.

It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.

Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don't you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.

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.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

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.

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.

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

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.

Remember this when you are queen," he whispered hoarsely. "I moved the earth and the water for you.

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.

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".

You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.

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.

Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.

But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.

but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.

But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.

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