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I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.

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
Long
Excitement
Good
Spent
Life
Eating
Possible
Reading
Peace
Undue
Girl
Practicals
Much
Practical

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
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Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
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I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
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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.
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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.
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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
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And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. ”I have come for the girl in the window,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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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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That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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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
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Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.
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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Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.
Catherynne M. Valente