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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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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Way
Books
Things
Thought
Life
Littles
Imaginatively
Like
Better
Adherence
Little
Lied
Might
Stubborn
Book
Boring
Much
Gave
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.
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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 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
There's more than one way between your world and ours. There's the changeling road, and there's the Ravishing, and there's those that Stumble through a gap in the hedgerows or a mushroom ring or a tornado or a wardrobe full of winter coats.
Catherynne M. Valente
Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.
Catherynne M. Valente
That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
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
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
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
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
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.
Catherynne M. Valente
Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
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
That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
Catherynne M. Valente
It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.
Catherynne M. Valente
In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
