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That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

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
Maps
Memory
Memories

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
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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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
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Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
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
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Never trust anyone under one hundred!
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.
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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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
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The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
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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You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.
Catherynne M. Valente
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It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.
Catherynne M. Valente
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September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.
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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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