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Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

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Famous Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

“You can make a little girl into anything if you say the right words. Take her apart until all that’s left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. Stitch her up again real good. Now, maybe you get a woman. If you’re lucky. If that’s what you were after. Just as easy to end up with a blackbird or a circus bear or a coyote. Or a parrot, just saying what’s said to you, doing what’s done to you, copying until it comes so natural that even when you’re all alone you keep cawing hello pretty bird at the dark.”

ChildrenWomenGirlsWords Have Power
Book:Six-Gun Snow White
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“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 children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders - but they must be trained. Beatrice could have told her all about it. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarm, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given?”

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Book:The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
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“Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. She certainly did not see Death stand on her tiptoes and blow a kiss after her, a kiss that rushed through all the frosted leaves of the autumnal forest, but could not quite catch a child running as fast as she could. As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.”

ChildrenMothersKisses
Book:The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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“All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.”

WellsHeartChildrenLongDifferentReadingGrowsGrowthKnownTreeSweetTerribleDearTerrorSpeedDrawingClimbsLeapTallWell KnownShockingHeartlessArithmeticFeyTall TreesShocking Things
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
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“Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.”

IfsWayLoveChildrenPlayWould BeAgeSongTurnsGamesLostDarkTeachColdEasierProtectEmpathyLonelyBraveLockedDelightfulCagesHeartlessDiceProtect YouUnlovedStalwartLost ChildSad EndingLost Things
Book:The Fairyland Series
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“That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.”

KnowsFirstsWellsChildrenHardStarsSeaGreenMovedHungerGoldenDespiteShoreLaughedSailStirringHard ThingsFirefly
Book:The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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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.”

WayHeartChildrenSaidMightEyeLostFeltCrySafeSeptemberHeartlessThrice
Book:The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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“Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.”

LooksChildrenLongWholeFacesThreeLaughingFolksWhole LifeGrievingOld WomanThirteenFrowning
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
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“The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, 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.”

WayMayChildrenStillsStatesStrongNationsBlackCitiesBloodMissingMoralityDrinkFairsWineHillsDependentStomachDividesRighteousCommitteesPotatoesSockFurParadesSupperVodkaPapaGoblinBorscht
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
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