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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

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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
Lying
Steam
Children
Breast
Heart
Cruel
Like
Breasts
Perceive
Smoldering
Lies
Hissing
Child
Blade
Within
Blades

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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
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She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
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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.
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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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After love, no one is what they were before.
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Death hath no dominion.
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I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
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Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
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War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.
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I am freedom and I will eat your heart
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Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.
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That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
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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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Husbands lie, Masha. I should know I've eaten my share. That's lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.
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Someone ought to write a novel about me.
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Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
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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.
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A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.
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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.
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