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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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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Considered
Childhood
Way
Pinned
Like
Considers
Equation
Equations
Mathematician
Butterfly

More quotes by 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.
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Woman! Come out! I have— She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. I have come to rescue you, she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
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The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
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Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
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Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. ”I have come for the girl in the window,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
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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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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.
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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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But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
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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.
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That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.
Catherynne M. Valente