Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
... 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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Much
Required
Time
Relationships
People
Took
Hold
Attention
Space
Vigilance
Force
Demanded
Together
Exhausting
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
Catherynne M. Valente
Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.
Catherynne M. Valente
Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
In his own country, Death can be kind.
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
Funny how question contains the word quest inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
Catherynne M. Valente
After love, no one is what they were before.
Catherynne M. Valente
But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.
Catherynne M. Valente
For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.
Catherynne M. Valente
However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness.
Catherynne M. Valente
That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.
Catherynne M. Valente
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.
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.
Catherynne M. Valente
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
Catherynne M. Valente
