Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

Finally, she said: “I’m lonely” — it’s weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can’t help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you’re confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: “I’m lonely,” and they ate her in the street.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire—well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are the ones that have to make the journey, fight the monster, kneel before whomever is big on kneeling these days. Bones do the work for the heart's grand plans. Bones know what you need. Hearts only know want.

~ 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

September felt panic burn through her like gasoline. Why couldn't he understand her? But I didn't [choose]! I have hardly had a chance to breathe since I got here and it's always like that in Fairyland. Everything is always happening and all at once. And I am growing up, Saturday! I am growing up and I have read books, so many books, and I know that growing up means you can't keep going to Fairyland the way you did when you were a child! Something happens to you and suddenly you have to keep a straight face and a straight line and I am afraid! I want something grand and I don't want to know what it is before it happens!

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Fate is a woman, I said to them. In fact, she is three women. Young, like us, so that they will have the courage to be cruel, having no weight of memory to teach temperance. Young, but so old, older than any stone. Their hair is silver, but full and long. Their eyes are black. But when they are at their work they become dogs, wolves, for they are hounds of death, and also hounds of joy. They take the strands of life in their jaws, and sometimes they are careful with their jagged teeth, and sometimes they are not. They gallop around a great monolith, the stone that pierces our Sphere where the meridians meet, that turns the Earth and pins it in place in the world. It is called the Spindle of Necessity, and all round it the wolves of fate run, and run, and run, and the patterns of their winding are the patterns of the world. Nothing can occur without them, but they take no sides. I could also say that there is such a stone, such a place, but the dogs who are women died long ago, and left the strands to fall, and we have been helpless ever since. That in a wolfless world we must find our own way. That is more comforting to me. I want my own way, I want to falter; I want to fail, and I want to be redeemed. All these things I want to spool out from the spindle that is me, not the spindle of the world. But I have heard both tales.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Anything is a poem if you say it often enough.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I savor bitterness — it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Koschei the Deathless made a face as he tasted the wine. It is far too sweet. Comrade Stalin fears bitterness and has the tastes of a spoiled princess. I savor bitterness--it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I am a golem, child,’ answered Lye calmly. ‘My mistress wrote it there. She was marvelous clever and knew all kinds of secret things. One of the things she knew was how to gather up all the slips of soap the bath house patrons left behind and arrange them into a girl shape and write “truth” on her forehead and wake her up and give her a name and say to her: “Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

...the villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share. That's lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

How we would like to argue with September, and tell her that in the waiting lies the pleasure! That we here in the world of sensible folk know how to wait without twisted-up bellies and tapping feet and wishing for the sun to hurry up and rise and set. That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever. But though I am sly, I am a trickster, I am even cruel—I cannot lie.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

It appeals to the higher nature of the self to put aside food which once lived - I do not consider myself food, why should I ask all other creatures to consider themselves so?

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

She was ... unhappy. It was part of her, you could not separate her from it. She was sad the way a horse is strong or a bird flies.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

The Glasshobs built it to keep an eye on the stars, who have a tendency to run off on adventures and forget about how much we down-below folks need to navigate and cast horoscopes and meet lovers on balconies.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

The tales lovers tell each other about how they met are hushed and secret things. They change year by year, for we all meet many times as we grow up and become different and new and exciting people--and this never stops, even for a minute, even when we are ninety.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Funny how question contains the word quest inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back, and to make friends with a wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. You chose not to let the Marquess hurt your friend--you chose to smash her cages! You chose to face your own Death, not to balk at a great sea to cross and no ship to cross it in. And twice now you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you--you chose yourself. You could have had a lovely holiday in Fairyland and never met the Marquess, never worried yourself with local politics, had a romp with a few brownies and gone home with enough memories for a lifetime’s worth of novels. But you didn’t. You chose. You chose it all. Just like you chose your path on the beach: to lose your heart is not a path for the faint and fainting.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Don't worry, my little lump of rock. Everybody gets a chance to choose. Or else where would irony come from?

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Some things a girl has in her to say no to and some things cut her down before she knows she’s gone. Sure, some twiggy, thorny snap in her says: no, this is awry, this is a bent thing, in that place that tells her to belly up to the floor before anyone’s even shadowed the doorframe. But it don’t matter. You can’t ask why she did it, when she was warned, when she was told. The plum truth is you would too, if everything impossible stood out there saying you could be loved so perfect the past would go up like a firecracker and shatter across the dark.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

She had a highly developed sense of humor which in some lights looked a bit like a sense of justice.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

The oligarchs do not care what justice is, only what seems just. They do not care what mercy is, only what appears merciful. Thus justice and mercy will always escape them.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Everything in this place was livid and lurid and living, and when he loved her and hurt her all at once she lived, too, higher and harder than she had thought she could.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

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

Listen, everything is possible in here. You can burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom. You can cut your hair before he ever gets the chance to climb up. It is possible to decline the beanstalk. You can let the old witch dance at your wedding, hand out the kind of forgiveness that would wake the dead and sleeping. You can just walk away, get on a horse, and go wake some other maiden from her narrative coffin, if you’re brave, if you’re strong. What do you want? Do you want to escape? Or were you looking for that candy house?

~ Catherynne M. Valente

As you might expect, the geographical location of the capital of Fairyland is fickle and has a rather short temper. I'm afraid the whole thing moves around according to the needs of narrative.'September put her persimmon down in the long grass. 'What in the world does that mean?''I ... I SUSPECT it means that if we ACT like the kind of folk who would find a Fairy city whilst on various adventures involving tricksters, magical shoes, and hooliganism, it will come to us.'September blinked. 'Is that how things are done here?''Isn't that how they're done in your world?'September thought for a long moment. She thought of how children who acted politely were often treated as good and trustworthy, even if they pulled your hair and made fun of your name when grownups weren't around. She thought of how her father acted like a soldier, strict and plain and organized -- and how the army came for him. She thought of how her mother acted strong and happy even when she was sad, and so no one offered to help her, to make casseroles or watch September after school or come over for gin rummy and tea. And she thought of how she had acted just like a child in a story about Fairyland, discontent and complaining, and how the Green Wind had come for her, too.'I suppose that is how things are done in my world. It's hard to see it, though, on the other side.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

It's only that the answers in most stories are boring because they are supplied by the real world rather than, well, something better. Something more stimulating. Sit down with the Greeks and the Romans, and the boring answers get more interesting. Seasons because a girl and a crocus. Death because a girl and an apple. The moon because a girl keeps driving her daft chariot into the sea.It's all down to girls, one way or another.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Very well, you do so love rules! I shall make some up for you on the spot, so that my little moppet is not forced to wander the world in a soup of stories without laws. A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

PERCIVAL: Now, who is telling the story?SEVERIN: The camera is telling the story. It's watching everything, and you can't lie to it, or it will know.PERCIVAL: My girl is so clever! No, the camera witnesses the story and records it, but it is outside the story. Like a very tiny god with one big, dark eye.... Which of [the characters] is the authority? Who controls how the story is told? And who is the audience, for whom all these wonderful things are meant?SEVERIN: They are all telling the story to me.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

How many beginnings can a story have, Daddy?As many as you can eat, my lamb. But only one ending. Or maybe it's the other way around: one beginning and a whole Easter basket of endings.Papa, don't be silly... A story has to start somewhere. And then it has to end somewhere. That's the whole point. That's how it is in real life.But that's not how it is in real life, Rinny. Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realize that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun.

~ Catherynne M. Valente