Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

She passed a hand over her eyes. A year and more now, that she had needed glasses. 'Look', those glasses said from her desk. 'Look how much you are not like the others. You grow older and your eyes wear out. In case you could ever mistake yourself for belonging'. Marya supposed this was why no one asked after stolen fairy tale girls. What embarassment they turn out to be. They grow tempers; they join the army; they need glasses. Who wants them?

We hold demonstrations and civil wars when inequities are discovered.

Human contact is a terrible drug. Sometimes, you'll even take the hit you know is tainted. You can't stop yourself. The need is too strong.

We think . . . that girls ought to sing. They ought to sing, and dance while they're singing. But we are not girls, and so can be almost certain that we know nothing about the matter.

And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.

Monsters, you know, cannot appreciate the niceties of commandments carved in stone.

Some switches must be flipped, and some children cannot help turning off to on and on to off, just to see what will happen.

But old women faced certain dangers in Fairyland, such as breaking a hip while riding a wild velocipede, or having everyone do what you say just because you had wrinkles.

brine shrimp were not overly talkative, squirrels failed to make significant headway in the fields of technology and mathematics, and seagulls were clearly unburdened by reason, feeling, or remorse.

Quando alguém está a viajar, tudo parece mais luminoso e mais agradável, o que não significa que seja mais luminoso e mais agradável, significa apenas que o lar terno e aprazível sofre em comparação com lugares desconhecidos aprimorados, com tudo o que têm de melhor à mostra.

Everything in the world, it turns out, is escapable except economy.

I heard there's fire in hell, but I'll bet the devil just hands you a bucket and tells you to get moving, this place ain't gonna clean itself.

The dead know how to savor as the living never can.

Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story.

But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.

But did you ever ask her?" "Ask her what?" "If she wanted to come back." "Why the hell would I ask her? Nobody wants to be dead. I did the right thing. For us. For her. You were there. It was heroic. I was selfless. I was strong." "Were you? Or could you just … not accept that something pretty was taken from you? Did you know her? Or was she hot and rich and uncomplicated?

Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit.

The light is the color of brandy seeping. It has a taste. Your skin tastes it, like you're all over tongues. The taste is sugar-cane, slowly rotting, turning into the great god rum. It's always that magic hour those film-boys love to shoot down here. Always gold.

Twelve mothers and twelve fathers were stacked into the long, thin house, each with four children, drawing the old cobalt-and-silver curtains down the center of rooms to make labyrinths of twelve dining rooms, twelve stting rooms, twelve bedrooms. It could be said, and was, that Marya Morevna had twelve mothers and twelve fathers, and so did all the children of that long, thin house.

I do not serve your personal issues, Morevna. I serve the People, and the People will have crimes against their body answered. You fought at Leningrad. So did I. Why should he be spared?' 'Somebody ought to be.

So you don't love him. Why would you look for love with a man? How could a man ever understand you?

But a person's smell and their alarms and borrowed shirts and secret words linger for a long time. Much longer than a house.

Anyway, nobody bothers with real beginnings anymore. We stopped making up stories about the creation of the world ages ago.

Well!" said Charlotte, and she meant to say something more, something clever, something brave, but she simply had not been prepared to stare down an army of frogs today.