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We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Inside
Grind
Lines
Engine
Live
Absurdity
Engines
Maps
Silly
Shrieks
Authority
Grinds
Terrible
Burns
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?
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Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.
Catherynne M. Valente
September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed voices, as if the words could make things happen just by being spoken, as if they were fairy words, and had to be handled just so.
Catherynne M. Valente
But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
Catherynne M. Valente
Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.
Catherynne M. Valente
She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
Catherynne M. Valente
The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.
Catherynne M. Valente
That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
Catherynne M. Valente
Woman! Come out! I have— She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. I have come to rescue you, she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
Catherynne M. Valente
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
Catherynne M. Valente
All things are strange which are worth knowing.
Catherynne M. Valente
And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
Catherynne M. Valente
Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.
Catherynne M. Valente
...For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.
Catherynne M. Valente
In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
An equation is a prophecy that always comes true.
Catherynne M. Valente
No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.
Catherynne M. Valente
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
Catherynne M. Valente
The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
Catherynne M. Valente
Someone ought to write a novel about me.
Catherynne M. Valente