Quotes from Catherynne M. Valente

Being the oldest sometimes meant being everyone's boss, but mostly, it meant being everyone's pack mule.

Firebirds are such frustating quarry. One minute it's all fiery tail feathers and red talons and the next, nothing but ash and a sore seat.

And you will arrive under a soldier's black mantle With your fearful greenish candle And will not show your face to me. But the riddle cannot torment me for long: Whose hand is here, under that white glove Who sent this wanderer, who comes in darkness?

A sorrow is a resourceful beast.

You're just shy of figuring out how to shuffle your horde of hormone-curdled control-obsessed malignant narcissists offworld. In short, you were about to become our problem. But now there is no problem! Now there is a process.

A father is nowhere near as valuable as a spoon.

I'm gonna be good at something other than marrying, darlings. Besides, I don't want them. I don't even wanna screw them, how am I gonna marry them?

I am here to tell you We are all of us just as mighty as planets—and you too, We'll let you in, we've got stalwart to spare— But you might have to sleep on the floor.

Children must practice disappointment when they are young, so that when they are grown, it will not go so hard with them.

Don't trust metaphors," the wombat snorted. "If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!

You can't stop people being assholes. They do love it so. The best you can hope for is that some people, sometimes, will turn out to be somewhat less than the absolute worst. When they manage to trip and fall over that incredibly low bar, they'll make you want to end it all. But when they leap over it, they'll make you believe this whole mess really was created for a reason—the bastards.

Perhaps, if you take a long enough view, we are all stronger than our goblins.

My heart yields dividends unseen; thou art my soul's annuity.

Marya watched from the upper floor as once again the birds gathered in the great oak tree, sniping and snapping for the last autumn nuts, stolen from squirrels and hidden in bark-cracks, which every winged creature knows are the most bitter of all nuts, like old sorrows sitting heavy on the tongue.

I could not say exactly how Mrs. H managed to catch pregnant. Mayhap Mr. H fired a baby into her from Peru with a better gun than mine. Probably he came home and performed his husbandry and left again before the sun could surprise him at it.

I wouldn't even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you'd do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.

We may also take a moment to feel a little sorry for her, for having a heart leads to the peculiar griefs of the grown.

Don't apologize, you were very fair." Dess sipped his tea. "The defense will stipulate that we're rubbish. Genocidal meatbags with mummy issues and embarrassingly poor impulse control.

Don't meddle in Politicks with your mouth full, dear," said the Vicereine gently.

She smelled like accounts receivable. She looked like old money.

like a man in black, she would find all this so much easier. "Ivan, you do not understand us. A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

Al kept it coming and nobody asked how and his only rule was: share. Be warm, be innocent, open your everything, speak easy. Share

Don't you know how far women stretch?

Greta, Greta, he whispered, eyes shut in rapture, on thy breast I write my Edda, at thy feet I lay the keys of Niflheim, by thy leave alone, I live, and breathe, and die.