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All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.

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
Games
Jobs
Would
Picnics
Naps
Odd

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
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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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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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.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.
Catherynne M. Valente
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This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
Catherynne M. Valente
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The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.
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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And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.
Catherynne M. Valente
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We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.
Catherynne M. Valente
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In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.
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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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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It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
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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I’m a monster,” said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. “Everyone says so.” The Minotaur glanced up at her. “So are we all, dear,” said the Minotaur kindly. “The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente