Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

When the aliens come, there'll be one queue to fight them and one queue to fuck them, and the second one'll be longer by light years.

Mary's smile is a spotlight—whomever it lands upon becomes brighter, becomes more real. It lands upon us.

Not too much call for knowing the American gene spread on the snowball.

CHYTERA: [...] May I... May I ask? You wear a wedding ring, but on the wrong hand. Indulge my curiosity? ERASMO: She didn't want to get married. Doesn't mean I wasn't her husband.

But which one is right? The real gods? The truth?' I asked. Balthazar smiled gently, as if speaking to a very slow child. 'That is not for us to judge. Each of us believes what seems true enough to him, and allows others the same luxury. Who can know what happened in the dim dawn of the world? We can barely decide what to have for breakfast without a theological debate - the Nurian law is polite disagreement. We do our best with how the world appears to our own eyes.

But the moon waxes, and my sadness dries up. Life is like that, of course.

Perhaps, if hunting had occurred, they had hunted each other through the stacks of books, sending warning shots of Shakespeare over one another's heads.

IN LUDO VERITAS. In the Game Is Truth.

September waited. She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.

September had only had coffee once, when her Aunt Margaret had snuck her a sip while her mother wasn't looking. It tasted bitter, but wild and strange. She rather wanted to taste it again.

I'll be into anything you want after breakfast and a coffee and serious medication, okay?

Still, he's a good sort, even if he grumbles about having to wear the tiara.

All tamed things are made a bit ridiculous in the process, you know.

Family is a thorny, vicious business

Sometimes I worry. Worrying is defined as obsessive examination of one's own code.

Y]ou'll be part of the family. Able to share all we have, so long as you share what you have. We make our lives into a potluck dinner—everyone brings their best with lots of pepper and no one goes hungry. Or lonely.

When one is travelling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it is brigther and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparasion to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

I chose you," he said simply. "All of the fish of me turned toward you at once.

I am the plague which will burn through the marrow of the Anointed City.

for my eeries, anything. Anything, forever, always.

I am so useful. I am not alone. And neither is he. "It must be nice," said Aubergine suddenly, "to have a friend like that, and like things so much." Yes.

alive and warm and real and in gross violation of her HOA contract.

I've no idea what I shall do when I am grown! I don't suppose there is much call for Knights or Bishops or Heroines in Omaha or even Chicago. And I'm sure other girls are much better at it than I.

how we met." Roary pulled a cooked apple out of her—apparently cavernous—pocket. She munched on it. "You guys saved us from the witch. It was awesome." Jess shuddered, getting into the spirit of her story. "The swamp was huge and soggy and mucky and full of snakes and birds and the moon and quiet. But there's not much good building material in swamps. Not like orchards or mountains. Not for what I like to make, anyway.