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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

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For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
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Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.
Catherynne M. Valente
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This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
Catherynne M. Valente
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She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I am freedom and I will eat your heart
Catherynne M. Valente
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Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I’m a monster,” said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. “Everyone says so.” The Minotaur glanced up at her. “So are we all, dear,” said the Minotaur kindly. “The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.
Catherynne M. Valente
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The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?
Catherynne M. Valente
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And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.
Catherynne M. Valente
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A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.
Catherynne M. Valente
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One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for awhile yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
Catherynne M. Valente