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You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

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
Come
September
Heart
Center
Always
Escape
Like
Remains
Inside
Thickest
White
Onion
Cannot
Slender
Part
Onions

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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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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One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for awhile yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
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Someone ought to write a novel about me.
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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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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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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?
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All things are strange which are worth knowing.
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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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Blue is for cruel bargains green is for daring what you oughtn’t violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes pink insists red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.
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She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.
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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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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
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It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
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...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.
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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.
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You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.
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I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.
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How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be.
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It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.
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Death hath no dominion.
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