Quote

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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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Really
Filled
Customs
Knowable
Never
Strange
Edge
Pioneer
Like
Sleep
Edges
Incomprehensible
World
Sound
Foreign
Pioneers
Language
Sounds
Imitate
Become
Totally
Interior
Persons
Touch
Interiors
Person
Private
Whispered

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
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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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 know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.
Catherynne M. Valente
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When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
Catherynne M. Valente
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But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I am freedom and I will eat your heart
Catherynne M. Valente
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You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
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
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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
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It appeals to the higher nature of the self to put aside food which once lived - I do not consider myself food, why should I ask all other creatures to consider themselves so?
Catherynne M. Valente
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When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up. Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory.
Catherynne M. Valente
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... but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.
Catherynne M. Valente
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When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another.
Catherynne M. Valente