Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

Never give up your voice for a man, you fucking guppy.

No good thing can last forever, because people are terrible and we have this feeling, we all have this feeling , that if not for that essential terribleness we could have gotten further by now. Done better. Done more.

you lot would rather watch someone suffer untold horrors than watch them enjoy so much as a cool drink if you don't have two of your own, and yours have cherries in them as well as more ice and little paper umbrellas, and even then most of you would still prefer to take theirs and have three. This is not the behavior of a sentient race. It is the behavior of wild animals.

She leaned in, and kissed her Marid gently, sweetly. She tried to kiss him the way she'd always thought kisses would be. His lips tasted like the sea.

Flowers are always more serious than they appear.

All the hair dye diluted itself into the sea a long time ago and I hope the jellyfish enjoyed their time as platinum blondes, I really and honestly do.

For the world has chosen and it says: make me whole. Think of us as a kind of haggard Calypso, offering everything, asking the world to choose anew. But it's a lie, really. There is only one choice and it is always the same. Only in Pentexore was any other ever possible. The world always says: I choose to wither and die if it means love and tapestries and sons and suitors, if it means stories and wars and a thousand ships launching. And we only give the world what it wants.

And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules until you are ready to rule yourself.

Hello old friend," he greeted it, "how strange for us to meet again, like this, with the snow blowing so outside." "You know my...my wrench?" "Of course I know it. It was not a wrench when we were last acquainted, but ones friends may change clothes and still one knows them.

But you are not one of us. For you, this thing is irreversible except by death, and not only the flesh is altered. Only the strongest of you can resist the collapse of the soul into the form; the mind is lazy, it naturally imitates the body. I have known none of you yet who can remain human when they wear another skin. But the thing is yours to do, if you should wish to do it.

the beginning is where the end gets born.

A mother's like a poison made for only one soul.

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.

I will tell you what I think. I think kings happen because some people have an empty place inside them that wants to be full and it will do anything to feel full and the first thing that makes it feel the opposite of empty it will chase forever and ever. And the weirdest thing about this place is that obeying fills it up, but making someone else obey makes it slosh up and splash all over the floor.

Seems like someone should have thought of a rule that goes Do not Fuck Your Only Planet to Death Under Any Circumstances . Seems like that should have been Rule Number One.

It's a fairy tale. A children's story. Not a funny or silly one, but one with blood and death and horror, because that's fairy tales, too. A kid got swallowed by a whale. A little Pinocchio. A little Caliban. It's all there. And, you know, in a fairy tale, the maidens are never dead - not really. They're just sleeping.

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.

no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough

There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.

One time a Fuckwit brought a snowball into work to prove that the planet getting warmer was just a story to scare little ones and I don't know for sure but I like to think he (or at least all his descendants) got eaten by sharks.

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.

Where human children have years and years in which to grow their hearts and learn to live with them while staying safe from all the troubles a heart hauls with it, a Changeling starts out raw and red and full of longing. Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs. Some walk around naked, though no one can see it but you and I.

A thing too familiar becomes invisible.

You couldn't ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at last, the one that ends in joy.