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After love, no one is what they were before.

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
Love

More quotes by 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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To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer, she whispered then, a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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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I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.
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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Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.
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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In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.
Catherynne M. Valente
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All things are strange which are worth knowing.
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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War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.
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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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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An equation is a prophecy that always comes true.
Catherynne M. Valente