Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?" sleeve asked primly. The Calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and said: "It is right and proper," he said, "for a girl to read as many books as there are bricks in this city, and then, when she is finished, to begin to write new ones which are made out of the old ones, as this city is made of those stones.

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which

I will always be here, in my old chair by the door, waiting for you, whenever you are lonesome. Our little house will always look just the same as when we first blew the dust off the bookshelves, and the kettle will always be just about to boil. Sometimes I will be young, and sometimes I will be old, sometimes you will be young, and sometimes you will be old. But for as long as forever, I will keep a room for you. I swear by the sparkle in my eye and the spring in your step.

Where I come from, some people wear fine suits just to ride on an Aeroplane - I suspect they think if they impress it enough it will be sure to carry them safely.

I savor bitterness — it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.

Everyone Is Looking for a Book Strong Enough to Change Them.

September laughed and her laugh sounded like a roar; as if she had never been able to properly laugh in her whole life, only giggle or chuckle or grin, and now that she could do it right, now that her laughing had grown up and put bells on, it had become the most boisterous, rowdy roar you ever heard.

Is there anything which does not do as you say?" the girl asked archly. He blushed. "You know my cry. I do not know yours," he mumbled, not meeting her gaze.

As ever, you are wiser than I, you old genie. May the Stars grant that you are always here to look after me." "Are you taking up religion in your old age, then, Captain?" "Hardly. Habit, my love, habit.

I am a Magyr. I could crush your skull with my hands and drink this rat town under the table afterwards. And if I wanted to kill myself a passel of sailors, I'd bloody well do it with cannon, saber, and a fist in the teeth, not by batting my damn eyelashes. You'd be wise to remember it, Maggie, my love, and if we see a mermaid on our jaunt across the high seas, the best thing for all of us would be to let Sheapshank here put an arrow through her giggling head.

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.

God is another way of talking about the power to break things, that's all. When you mean to break a goblet or a bone, well, just do it and be done. But when the things to be broken get big enough you have to start talking about God.

Mornings are not for company. They are for feeling cross and checking crab cages.

It is my dearest hope that one day I shall be the one to discover the GUT-the Grand Unified Tale, the one which will bind together all our Theorems and Laws, leaving out not one Orphan Girl or Youngest Son or Cup of Life and Death. Not one Descent or Ascent, not one Riddle or Puzzle or Trick. One perfect golden map that can guide any soul to its desire and back again. I will be the one to do it, I know it. I hope I know it. I know I hope it.

And honey, everybody eats art and drinks stories. It's the best drunk there is!

I'll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life.

And, at night, in a narrow bed in her old room, Mary Morevna would hold Ivan tight inside of her, demanding his obedience to her, demanding that his soul be ripped out and emptied into her.

Come forward. Come in from the summer heat and the flies. Come in from that assault on all senses, that pummelling of rod and cone and drum and cilia. Come in from the great spotlight of the sun, sweeping across the white sands, making everyone, and therefore no one, a star. Come inside and meet the prologue.

Memory is like that. It alters itself so that girls are always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.

Sophia fully and truly thinks she will die. The sound of it is a knife, if a knife could kiss, and the kiss could turn the color of morning... ... Yet it contains a perfection that is twin to pain.

he had not guessed how much of the body of a Quest was simply walking .

All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending.

no one says a word that has not been spoken a thousand times before, a thousand thousand times, and even the first of those was a repetition of words that came before.

You took on a Quest, which is a thing only men—and exceedingly stupid men, usually—do.