Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

Each arrow was fletched in feathers that once belonged to immortal birds so wise that if you asked them to tell you the meaning of life, they would have an answer, and it would be short, and easy to understand, and as true as tea.

That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.

First Law of Heroics." The Monaciello grinned up at a confused September. "Someone has to tell you it's impossible, or the Quest can't go on. Your friend has volunteered herself as a Non-Euclidean Companion, which is also necessary to proceed to the next stage.

But soon the wine sack was empty, and sleep brushed my ears with her ash-lips.

They knew all about the war with France from Papa's magazines. But whenever they tried to imagine what a war was actually like, it unfolded in their heads like a cross between a chess game, a horse race, a country dance, and a very racy night at the theater.

Narrators may go where they please.

I thought that for a long while, but you chose me, and then you chose him, and choosing is hard - one choice is never the end of the story.

When it was all done and said and shot and ignited and vaporized and swept up and put away and both sincerely and insincerely apologized for, everyone left standing knew that the galaxy could not bear a second go at this sort of thing. Something had to be done. Something mad and real and bright.

So my name is Scout. Yeah, my mom read To Kill a Mockingbird. Leave it to her to think 5th grade required reading is totally deep.

still not entirely amenable to having this conversation that would not stop having him.

I belong in the refrigerator. Because the truth is, I'm just food for a superhero. He'll eat up my death and get the energy he needs to become a legend.

It's easier to use somebody if you can think of them as mute and dumb and made for your pleasure.

Snow White gets a Social Security card. She gets a job building houses out in California. Picks oranges.

I think I shall never be free. I think I traded me freedom for a better story.

It can only benefit the city to have endless waves of exceptionally capable, even brilliant, folk unfettered by class and family connections. They change the world once a generation. That is certainly worth something.

In the treaty were provisions for the hundred thousand veterans left maimed and irrevocably mute throughout the city. As is the way of things, their sacred places and comforts have dwindled to a lonely strip of shoreline and a polite nod whenever they are passed in the street.

September had no natural defense against lost things, being one herself. She could not quite have put it into words, but she felt profoundly, at the bottom of her new, shining heart, that she could find lost things. She could make them un-lost if she were brave enough. After all, if enough lost things band together, even in the darkest depths, they aren't really lost at all anymore.

Dreamers don't make good workers. So you teach them that no matter how miserable, what they've got is the best, and the Other is terror and lies. Well, to be bold, fuck that.

For this is the constant sorrow of the dead, that though they drink and eat and dream much as they did before, they know they are dead, and yearn desperately to live again, to feel blood inside them once more, to remember who they were. For the memory of the dead is short, and thought by thought they lose all sense of their former lives until they drift from place to place as shades, their eyes hollow. After a time, they believe they are alive again.

My mistress used to say that you couldn't ever really be naked unless you wanted to be. She said, 'Even if you've taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It's quite difficult to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn't being naked, not really. It's just showing skin. And foxes and bears have skin, too, so I shan't be ashamed if they're not.

Wouldn't you like to have comrades?' But she would not like that. She wanted only to rest and to read her old, rain-swollen books, turning the pages carefully, so carefully.

What's in a name?" rumbled Iago. "People will call you whatever they want. New owner, new name. If it bothers you, you oughtn't come when you're called. They'll learn eventually. I rarely come trotting when someone hollers for me. That's all a name's for, in the end.

He ran like if he kept running he could escape the last thousand years.

His fear made her stronger; she could be brave for both of them.