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Quotes About Responsibility

I'll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life. Now, how does that usually pan out in the movies, kitten? At least we let you try to convince us we're wrong. I doubt you asked the dodo birds what they thought about it before you blasted the last one in the face with a blunderbuss.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
You may not know it but the keeping of a large house by one girl is the hardest work going on earth. 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.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Because it's my fault, you see. I did it. And you must always clean up your own messes, even when your messes look just like you and curtsy very viciously when what they mean is, I am going to make trouble forever and ever .
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Punishment doesn't mean you aren't loved. On the contrary. You can only punish someone you love.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
All things built with tax money are beautiful: so we must think or go mad.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
As you swallow the cow's tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Who liked it hot and hated snow? The Fuckwits did! the Fuckwits did! Who ate up everything that grows? The Fuckwits did! the Fuckwits did! Who drowned the world in oceans blue? The Fuckwits did! the Fuckwits did! Who took the land from me and you? The Fuckwits did, we know it's true! Are you Fuckwits, children dear? We're GARBAGETOWNERS, free and clear! But who made the garbage, rich and rank? the Fuckwits did, and we give thanks.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Seems like someone should have thought of a rule that goes Do not Fuck Your Only Planet to Death Under Any Circumstances . Seems like that should have been Rule Number One.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
A tongue is very like a gun, which is why they nearly rhyme. Both can be fired to devastating effect, for good or evil, and both can explode in your hands, wounding your comrades instead of your enemies.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
It's different. When you make a house good and strong because it's your house, a place you made, a place you're proud of, it's not at all the same as making it glow for someone who ordered you to do it.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
God is another way of talking about the power to break things, that's all. When you mean to break a goblet or a bone, well, just do it and be done. But when the things to be broken get big enough you have to start talking about God.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Who," coughed Zvonok, "do you think broke your favorite teacup last fall? The one with the cherries on the handle?" "I was careless, Comrade Zvonok. I left the window open and a storm blew through." "Incorrect! I broke it because you left me no cream and no dry biscuits, and when your old boots wore through, you burned them up for heat instead of giving them to me!" "Hear, hear!" the table erupted in approval once more. "Well done, well done!" "I'm surely very sorry--" "So is your teacup.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
I didn't want to do my mathematics homework back home. Or mend the fence or mind the chickens. But I did it anyway. Just because a person doesn't want to do a thing doesn't mean they ought to shirk.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
A body is never so vicious as when it has only itself to blame for its trouble.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
And in my dream, if the fathers and mothers loved their sons and daughters and sang to them in their cradles, they made a good country, and if they didn't, they made a tyranny, so whether existence is a bloodbath or a bubble bath could hinge on whether a little child got kissed good night with a story and a glass of water or sent to bed without snuggles or a snack or a cohesive philosophy of justice.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
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.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
You can't fix a bad man like a bad staircase.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
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.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
I suppose if you have ten children one of them might go into government, which is the same as losing a child really.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
I am sorry," said the machine, slumping at the shoulders. "I will try to have the right answer, if you will come back later." I put my hand on the creature's shoulder. "It's all right; I don't know, either. But spiders are funny and determined things, and must be treated carefully." "Yes," she said. "It is the same with clocks".
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Bran felt terribly sorry for his sisters, but it was hardly his fault that the world was so determined to make girls suffer a great deal more than boys. He hadn't built the world. It had nothing to do with him.
~ Catherynne M. Valente