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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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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Earth
Wells
Well
Wisely
Many
Ruled
Sometimes
Mostly
Years
Neither
Lived
Humanity
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
Catherynne M. Valente
Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin.
Catherynne M. Valente
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
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
The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
One of the many quotes on love...Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance.
Catherynne M. Valente
All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
Catherynne M. Valente
War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.
Catherynne M. Valente
A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.
Catherynne M. Valente
She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
Love, I've never been anyone's mother I don't know how to talk to young or old. But don't stop smiling just because I flap my mouth and say something that's not dressed around the edges like a lace tablecloth. Thicken up and we'll get along fine.
Catherynne M. Valente
You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
Catherynne M. Valente