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Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

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“Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being.”

KnowsWayWellsLongRunningLanguageSilenceSkillsComputerFilledDistanceSizeProgrammingRestlessNovemberLong DistanceParametersProtocolLiving AlonePlaces You Live
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
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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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“Who are you?" "I am Death," said the creature. "I thought that was obvious." "But you're so small!" "Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off-very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.”

IfsWayLongSaidEndsSeemsEyeYoungGrowsDarkSawsHugeBedCreaturesObviousSeptemberLong WayChildlike Wonder
Book:The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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“I have terrible nightmares, you know. Every night when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hatstand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies and still, I cannot sleep.”

KnowsLongDoeStillsHomeNightSleepWhiteNiceDyingTerribleDrinkBedRedSkinsAgreeWineLaysBonesNightmareComing HomeEvery NightMiceSoupWashingLiliesSupperStovesLong DayRed WineScythes
Book:The Fairyland Series
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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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“These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.”

MenMayLongBookCertainGirlHeavenGriefBoysHairLoversBlueFolksKingdomsTitlesBeastScholarDispositionKnightsBrutesObsessiveKingdom Of HeavenIndustriousBlue Hair
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
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