Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

“It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.”

“... 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.”

“Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless child...”

“It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.”

“Those were all big words, to be sure, 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 fly...”

“Buck up, baby blowfish. Just puff up bigger than your sadness and scare it right off. That's the only way to live in the awful old ocean.”

“When spring comes, I shall meet you at the Municipal Library, and you will see how much I've learned! You'll be so proud of me and love me so!''Oh, Ell, but I do love you! Right now!''One can alway...”

“Long before you were born a man decided that there could be a very simple test to determine if a machine was intelligent. Not only intelligent, but aware, possessed of a psychology. The test had on...”

“September suddenly realized something. "But Ell, Orrery begins with O! How can you know so much about it?"The Wyverary soared high, his neck stretching into a long red ribbon, full of words and pie...”

“A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which youll learn all about when youre older an...”

“Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.”

“You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”

“A body can only deliver up the truth its bones know, Its blood, which is its history.”

“Im not a Knight. Im a Bishop. Or at least I am trying to be. And traveling with you is the most slantwise, backward thing I can possibly think of, which in this place probably means its the right t...”

“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.”

“All time is mean young man. It takes and does not give, it rushes when you wish it would linger and drags when you wish is would fly. It flows sullenly, only in one direction, when it might take a ...”

“I thought: this is how you make a human being. A human being is beautiful and sick. A human being glitters and starves.”

“You can't trust just any old person who comes along with a hundred puffins and a pretty face!”

“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonog...”

“This is not a lie: Memory has the taste and texture of cooked meat. Eat it and live. Remember, but only what it is licit to remember.In Aerograd, the word for meat and memory are the same.”