Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

there a difference between having been coded to present a vast set of standardized responses to certain human facial, vocal, and linguistic states and having evolved to exhibit response B to input A in order to bring about a desired social result?

September felt sure that her shadow and everyone's shadows were all part of the same broken thing, and broken things were to be fixed, whatever the cost, especially if you had been the one to break it in the first place.

They start setting up on a little left stage playing my secret favorite song: the rustling of sheet music and set lists, the coughing and quiet warm-up, the tuning of instruments, squeak of speakers and amps, the last rags on cigarettes and popping of knuckles.

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.

So this guy walks into a dragon's lair and he says why the long tale? HAR HAR BUDDY says the dragon FUCK YOU.

Most people don't like complexity. They would prefer the world to be simple.

who am i, really? What does any of it mean? i'm so afraid someday everyone will see that i'm just an imposter, a fake, among all the real and gorgeous godheads. -

That's how it goes—as soon as there's anything interesting in Ancient Greece, some arsehole with a magic hat comes along to murder it.

I suppose because it's boring to keep telling stories where people just get born and grow up and get married and die. So they add strange things in, to make it interesting when a person is born, more satisfying when they get married, sadder when they die.

Coyness is what makes it art, darling. Otherwise … otherwise it's nothing but a funeral.

How poor you are, September. You make my heart groan. I know about Homesickness. It begins with H. What will you do?

Things that cannot long be kept secret: death in the family, the loss of a ring, corruption of the spirit, boredom, illicit love. Sickness. Addiction. Pregnancy. Within the pure white wimple of her beekeeping suit, wrapped in buzzing,

What others call you, you become. It's a terrible magic that everyone can do — so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become.

The thing I hate about being dead is you can't move on. I was in love with him when I died, so I'll be in love with him till the sun burns out.

A man's voice filled up my head from my jawbone up to the plates of my skull. The most beautiful and saddest voice that ever was... A voice like the whole old world calling up from the bottom of the sea. The man on Madeline Brix's tape was saying he was happy, and he hoped I was happy, too.

Magic has a logic, like algebra. Once you get to know it, it's easy. If this, then that. You write with a pencil, you don't make frog soup with it.

There's no fun in arguing if you never get shown up. Who plays a game if there's no chance they'll lose? I do so crave to be proven wrong. It is as sweet as proving yourself right, when done properly. The trouble is, most people only argue with their friends and their family, which a real sportsman knows is no way to practice. If no one you know can prove you wrong, you're in peril and that's the truth.

Orpheus asks his mother. She tells him the obvious: the entrance to hell is always in your own house, silly billy.

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.

She listens, and I wish I could give her a little gold trophy for it, but I can't, because of all the things Fuckwits gave trophies for, they never thought listening like nothing exists but time and words was half as important as losing a volleyball tournament.

I'm quite civilized, I promise,' Manythanks sniffed, smiling. 'Wairwulves are cultured. We have choirs and charity races and rotary clubs. It's when we're human that you must take care.

Sometimes, magic is like that. It lands on your head like a piano, a stupid, ancient, unfunny joke, and you spend the rest of your life picking sharps and flats out of your hair.

You can't fix a bad man like a bad staircase.

It was late spring when Marya Morevna slid her brass key into the lock of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, feeling it slide, too, between her own ribs, and open her like a reliquary full of old, nameless bones.