Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Like
Slowly
Cat
Knew
Girlhood
Girl
Wrung
Death
Wildness
Become
Snake
Anything
Wolf
Years
Snakes

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Image
Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
... 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
Image
Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
Men die. It's practically what they're for.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
Death hath no dominion.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.
Catherynne M. Valente
Image
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
Image
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.
Catherynne M. Valente