Top 500 Catherynne M. Valente Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “You couldn’t ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at last, the one that ends in joy.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

52. “This is how you learn to see: You put together a crew. No one can see a damn thing clearly with only two eyes.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

53. “Music has more rules than math or magic and it’s twice as dangerous as both or either.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

54. “Narrators may go where they please.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

55. “Things I Will Try to Say More Often: Why? I love you. I’m sorry. May I have chocolate? Yes. yes. yes.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

56. “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.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

57. “I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

58. “Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

59. “That’s Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It’s nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

60. “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

61. “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

62. “I am freedom and I will eat your heart.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

63. “It’s a fairy tale. A children’s story. Not a funny or silly one, but one with blood and death and horror, because that’s fairy tales, too. A kid got swallowed by a whale. A little Pinocchio. A little Caliban. It’s all there. And, you know, in a fairy tale, the maidens are never dead – not really. They’re just sleeping.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

64. “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

65. “Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

66. “I wouldn’t even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you’d do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

67. “All stories must end so, with the next tale winking out of the corners of the last pages, promising more, promising moonlight and dancing and revels, if only you will come back when spring comes again.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

68. “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

69. “A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations!”

— Catherynne M. Valente

70. “Shadows are where magic comes from. Your dark and dancing self, slipping behind and ahead and around, never quite looking at the sun.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

71. “Will Hilt to hand yet be restored? Take me up, thy mother’s sword.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

72. “I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

73. “Forests have secrets,′ he said gently. ‘It’s practically what they’re for. To hide things. To separate one world from another.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

74. “Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

75. “Do you remember being born? Only a few can say they do and not be caught immediately in the lie, and most of them are wizards. I, of course, remember it perfectly. Certain benefits are granted to narrators as part of the hiring package, to compensate for our irregular hours and unsafe working conditions.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

76. “He’ll burn you down like wax if you let him. You’ll think it’s love, when he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

77. “No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

78. “We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

79. “Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

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

— Catherynne M. Valente

81. “So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

82. “I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

83. “Sweet as cherries, bright as berries, light of my moony sky.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

84. “And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

85. “Family is a transitive property.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

86. “There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

87. “In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

88. “You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

89. “I wish for my child to have a mind as stark and wild as the winter, a spirit as clear and fine as my window, and a heart as red and open as my wounded hand.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

90. “Where I come from, some people wear fine suits just to ride on an Aeroplane – I suspect they think if they impress it enough it will be sure to carry them safely.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

91. “The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

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

— Catherynne M. Valente

93. “September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

94. “So much light, sweet girl, begins in the dark.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

95. “Never trust anyone under one hundred!”

— Catherynne M. Valente

96. “When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

97. “Endings are rubbish. No such thing. Never has been, never will be. There is only the place where you choose to stop talking. Everything else goes on forever.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

98. “What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?”

— Catherynne M. Valente

99. “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

100. “That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.”

— Catherynne M. Valente