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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.
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
Hold
Attention
Space
Vigilance
Force
Demanded
Together
Exhausting
Much
Required
Time
Relationships
People
Took
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?
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After love, no one is what they were before.
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Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
Catherynne M. Valente
And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
Catherynne M. Valente
Temperament, you'll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat.
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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
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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Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar.
Catherynne M. Valente
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
Catherynne M. Valente
We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower— At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes. Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way.
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
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
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
To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer, she whispered then, a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them.
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
