Top 500 Catherynne M. Valente Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “I used to look up at night and dream of the solar system. I know, I know – who didn’t? But your own dreams seem so special, so terribly yours, until you grow up and figure out they’re just like everyone else’s. How perfect and beautiful and silent and dead each planet hung in my heart! All nine names, written in squiggly, shaky handwriting, glowing inside me.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

152. “You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you – you chose yourself.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

153. “First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

154. “I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

155. “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.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

156. “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

157. “He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

158. “We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one ought to let him in to dinner.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

159. “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.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

160. “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

161. “We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

162. “My mistress used to say that you couldn’t ever really be naked unless you wanted to be. She said, ‘Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s quite difficult 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. And foxes and bears have skin, too, so I shan’t be ashamed if they’re not.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

163. “Love, I’ve never been anyone’s mother; I don’t know how to talk to young or old. But don’t stop smiling just because I flap my mouth and say something that’s not dressed around the edges like a lace tablecloth. Thicken up and we’ll get along fine.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

164. “Folk dress in all manner of finery and wonderful hats to go and watch the races, but only if it’s horses doing the barreling that day. This, at least, is understandable, for horses, in secret, love hats more than any other creature. It is a horse’s tragedy that they can never properly wear one.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

165. “I was used and tricked and thrown away, but I cannot be forgiven. It’s a funny thing. You go your whole life thinking you’re the protagonist, but really, you’re just the backstory. The boys shrug and go on, they fight and blow things up and half of them do much worse... and still get a key to the city, and eventually you’re just a story your high school boyfriend tells the kid he had with his new wife.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

166. “Everything in creation is just a trick of the light – the only difference between heaven and hell is who’s running those lights, who’s got the switch, who knows the cues.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

167. “Her heart ached as though a knife had quietly slipped between her ribs.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

168. “Sometimes, magic is like that. It lands on your head like a piano, a stupid, ancient, unfunny joke, and you spend the rest of your life picking sharps and flats out of your hair.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

169. “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 flying.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

Featured in: Reading Quotes

170. “Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That’s what death is for. That’s why they keep telling this story. It’s the only story.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

171. “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.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

172. “She is dead. Almost certainly dead. Nearly conclusively dead. She is, at the very least, not answering her telephone.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

173. “But in the end, all wars are more or less the same. If you dig down through the layers of caramel corn and peanuts and choking, burning death, you’ll find the prize at the bottom and the prize is a question and the question is this: Which of us are people and which of us are meat?”

— Catherynne M. Valente

174. “Think about it, mate: How could a species like that develop the massive technology you need to achieve faster-than-light interstellar travel, yeah? All they do is hunt and eat. They’re just stupid murderlumps or killbots supreme with a side of zombie-mayonnaise. Where’s the nerdy shy Predator scientist who figured out how to build a spaceship while all the big jock Predators were down the pub ripping one another’s spines out, eh? Nowhere, because she don’t exist.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

175. “Heroes in motion tend to stay in motion, but villains in motion tend toward mass destruction.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

176. “You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

177. “How else are you supposed to deal with people who like terrible things? Hit them with a shovel till they stop, that’s how.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

178. “It’s saying no. That’s your first hint that something’s alive. It says no. That’s how you know a baby is starting to turn into a person. They run around saying no all day, throwing their aliveness at everything to see what it’ll stick to. You can’t say no if you don’t have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn’t even want to. No is the heart of thinking.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

179. “She’s an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

180. “As you swallow the cow’s tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

181. “Do you know, Masha, how revelation comes? Like death. So sudden, though you knew all along it must occur. A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

182. “Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

183. “We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

184. “Perhaps one was not meant to see what a husband looked like before he made himself more or less presentable. Perhaps the republic of husbands was a strange and frightening place full of not only birds, but bats too, and lizards, and bears, and worms, and other beasts waiting to fall out of a tree and into a wedding ring.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

185. “I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

186. “It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

187. “He quirked an eyebrow briefly, slightly, in such a way that no one afterwards might be able to safely accuse him of having done it. Sei knew the look. Names are meaningless, plosives and breath, but those who liked the slope of her waist often made much of hers, which denoted purity, clarity – as though it had any more in the way of depth than others. They wondered, all of them, if she really was pure, as pure as her name announced her to be, all white banners and hymeneal grace.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

188. “It’s different. When you make a house good and strong because it’s your house, a place you made, a place you’re proud of, it’s not at all the same as making it glow for someone who ordered you to do it.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

189. “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

190. “If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

191. “Punishment doesn’t mean you aren’t loved. On the contrary. You can only punish someone you love.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

192. “Things that cannot long be kept secret: death in the family, the loss of a ring, corruption of the spirit, boredom, illicit love. Sickness. Addiction. Pregnancy.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

193. “I can’t imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It’s not done! You don’t go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn’t go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

194. “How long was it, between the time when you were happy, and the time when you wanted to kill him?”

— Catherynne M. Valente

195. “Rules are for those who can’t think of a better way.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

196. “Death stands behind every bride, every groom.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

197. “A prophetic world that can never come true.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

198. “She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can’t ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again – on principle.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

199. “That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

200. “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.”

— Catherynne M. Valente