CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE QUOTES IV

American author (1979- )

For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Fairyland Series


But a death is a death. It's a thing you can't get around. It just sits there like a fat arsehole in black pyjamas, eats all your food, drinks all your wine, and demands you call it mister for the privilege.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


It's very natural and very unsettling and sinister that the human tendency is to look at something that they can't categorize and slap a name that they're completely familiar with on it so that they don't feel quite so uncanny about it.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

interview, Electric Lit, December 1, 2015


Secrets seem so important until there's no one left to spill them to.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making


That's what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It's practically what they're for.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making


Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Deathless


This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you'll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Six-Gun Snow White


If you want to know about the beginning of things, you have to talk to the dead.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


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

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice


A library is never complete. That's the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Fairyland Series


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

Radiance


Longing for the fantastic is a human constant, I think.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

interview, Electric Lit, December 1, 2015


When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making


A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


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

Radiance


The Moon cares nothing for our cute little troubles. She ate a thousand girls for lunch yesterday, and she was hungry again in an hour. She barely even looks at us.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


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

The Fairyland Series


Any story is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance