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First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
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
Young
Bird
Firsts
Seven
Avid
First
Students
Salt
Must
Knew
Birds
Things
Hours
Student
Life
Water
Length
World
Death
Hour
Night
Aware
More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente
Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower— At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes. Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way.
Catherynne M. Valente
War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.
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That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.
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Never trust anyone under one hundred!
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Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
Catherynne M. Valente
Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
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
Someone ought to write a novel about me.
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How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be.
Catherynne M. Valente
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
Catherynne M. Valente
September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed voices, as if the words could make things happen just by being spoken, as if they were fairy words, and had to be handled just so.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
Catherynne M. Valente
Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword.
Catherynne M. Valente
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
Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
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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.
Catherynne M. Valente