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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
Men die. It's practically what they're for.
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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
Catherynne M. Valente
Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
Catherynne M. Valente
In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
Catherynne M. Valente
To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer, she whispered then, a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.
Catherynne M. Valente
Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.
Catherynne M. Valente
I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.
Catherynne M. Valente
The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.
Catherynne M. Valente
Temperament, you'll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat.
Catherynne M. Valente
Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It's the way of the world.
Catherynne M. Valente
Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.
Catherynne M. Valente
It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
Catherynne M. Valente
It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.
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
We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
Catherynne M. Valente
I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
Catherynne M. Valente
Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar.
Catherynne M. Valente