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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

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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
Eye
House
Around
Remember
Look
Dancing
Looks
Rule
Trying
Rest
Question

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.
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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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
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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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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.
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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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
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In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
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... 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
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We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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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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Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.
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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The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.
Catherynne M. Valente
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You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
Catherynne M. Valente
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When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.
Catherynne M. Valente
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The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.
Catherynne M. Valente