Quote

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

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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
Would
Hurt
Machine
Seen
Hungry
Girl
Wrote
Wanted
Machines
Nothing
Loving
Needing
Made
Bird
Whispered
Kind
Paper
Blank
Never
Magic
Birds

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
Catherynne M. Valente
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All things are strange which are worth knowing.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.
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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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You look like a winter night, he had told her when he had given it to her. I could sleep inside the cold of you.
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Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Woman! Come out! I have— She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. I have come to rescue you, she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
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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You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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... but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword.
Catherynne M. Valente
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It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
Catherynne M. Valente