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

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up. Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day.
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I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?
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Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.
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... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
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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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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.
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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.
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So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.
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I wouldn't even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you'd do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.
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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.
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In his own country, Death can be kind.
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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.
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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.
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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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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
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That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
Catherynne M. Valente