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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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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Anybody
Listen
Four
Reality
Always
Minotaur
Stomachs
Grip
Firm

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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After love, no one is what they were before.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I burn, I freeze I am never warm. I am rigid I forgot softness because it did not serve me.
Catherynne M. Valente
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... but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.
Catherynne M. Valente
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The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.
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
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You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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
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Blue is for cruel bargains green is for daring what you oughtn’t violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes pink insists red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.
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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In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
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I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
Catherynne M. Valente
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All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
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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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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One of the many quotes on love...Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance.
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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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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Never trust anyone under one hundred!
Catherynne M. Valente
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It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
Catherynne M. Valente
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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