Quote

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

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
Sometimes
Objects
Palaces
Long
Rooms
Recalls
Men
Tree
Chest
Life
Memories
Chests
Like
Wonder
Landscape
Live
Lonely
Pebble
Looks
Memory
Pebbles
Many
Infinite
Palace

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like.
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But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
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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.
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How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be.
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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.
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You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
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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.
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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.
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Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
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Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.
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... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.
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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.
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He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.
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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.
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She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.
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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.
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Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
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In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.
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Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
Catherynne M. Valente