Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

Things that begin and end in grief: marriage, harvest, childbirth. Journeys away from home. Journeys toward home. Surgeries. Love. Weeping.

all children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes.

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

Love is the Turing test, says Ilet when she is eighty and drawing up the plans for a massive, luminous, lonely ship she will never see completed. It is how we check for life. We ask and we answer. We seek a human response. And you are my test, Elefsis, says Neva, one hundred and three years later, inside that ship, twelve light years from home and counting.

Oh, aren't you just the rottenest wet blanket whoever spoiled a sport.

Most everyone lived twice in those days. They echoed their own steps. They took one step in the real world and one in their space. They saw double, through eyes and monocle displays. They danced through worlds like veils.

I will not disappoint you, I promise. My name is Gleam. Take me with you. I held you in the dark. I defied straw sandals to bring you sunfruit. I am worth something. One hundred and twelve years is worth something.

Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.

Bad things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to okay people. Bad things happen to everyone.

Obviously, the eating or drinking of Fairy foodstuffs constitutes a binding contract to return at least once a year in accordance with seasonal myth cycles." September started. "What? What does that mean?" The Green Wind stroked his neatly pointed beard. "It means: Eat anything you like, precious cherry child!

God is a random event, a nexus of pain and pleasure and making and breaking.

I have not been in Fairyland nearly long enough to start crying, September thought, then bit her tongue savagely.

In the beginning there was Dust, and in the end there will be Dust, and in the middle there is Dust, Dust, Dust!

This maze is laid out such that should you step through the correct path, by its end you will have learned the most extraordinary dance, such that any coronation would be proud to see you at the height of its feast, such that any holy dervish would weep and call you his devotion." "I think that is very strange—" "All things are strange which are worth knowing.

She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.

They were all whispers now, the two of them, conspirators and thieves.

We've made too many movies, you and I. Or too few. Always too few. Too many to have any meaning, too few to say what we meant.

Time is no one's friend--time has no social niceties and holds the door for nobody nowhere. But I hold the door for time, with my one good paw.

Have I ever done anything of my own, an act or state that arose from Elefsis, and not careful, exquisite mimicry? Have they?

All Librarians are members of the Catalogue. That's what you call a coven when it's made up of Librarians instead of witches. Librarians have sorted and alphabetized all the magic that ever thought to put a rabbit and a hat together. Who do you think invented Special Collections?

I am sustained by Being Necessary.

Though any species on any dumb gobworld may develop sentience (the poor bastards), no government ever does'?

Didn't you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman's house.

You need me," said Xiaohui breathlessly, pulling November over her, sliding hands under her belt to claw and knead. "You need me." "Don't you mean 'I need you'?" whispered November in the girl's ear. "No," she sighed, arching her back, tipping her chin up, making herself easy to kiss, easy to fall into, easy to devour. "You'll see. You'll see.