Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Why should he be spared?Someone ought to be. And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.

Your Eve was wise, John. She knew that Paradise would make her mad, if she were to live forever with Adam and know no other thing but strawberries and tigers and rivers of milk. She knew they would tire of these things, and each other. They would grow to hate every fruit, every stone, every creature they touched. Yet where could they go to find any new thing? It takes strength to live in Paradise and not collapse under the weight of it. It is every day a trial. And so Eve gave her lover the gift of time, time to the timeless, so that they could grasp at happiness....And this is what Queen Abir gave to us, her apple in the garden, her wisdom--without which we might all have leapt into the Rimal in a century. The rite bears her name still. For she knew the alchemy of demarcation far better than any clock, and decreed that every third century husbands and wives should separate, customs should shift and parchmenters become architects, architects farmers of geese and monkeys, Kings should become fishermen, and fishermen become players of scenes. Mothers and fathers should leave their children and go forth to get other sons and daughters, or to get none if that was their wish. On the roads of Pentexore folk might meet who were once famous lovers, or a mother and child of uncommon devotion--and they would laugh, and remember, but call each other by new names, and begin again as friends, or sisters, or lovers, or enemies. And some time hence all things would be tossed up into the air once more and land in some other pattern. If not for this, how fastened, how frozen we would be, bound to one self, forever a mother, forever a child. We anticipate this refurbishing of the world like children at a holiday. We never know what we will be, who we will love in our new, brave life, how deeply we will wish and yearn and hope for who knows what impossible thing!Well, we anticipate it. There is fear too, and grief. There is shaking, and a worry deep in the bone. Only the Oinokha remains herself for all time--that is her sacrifice for us. There is sadness in all this, of course--and poets with long elegant noses have sung ballads full of tears that break at one blow the hearts of a flock of passing crows! But even the most ardent lover or doting father has only two hundred years to wait until he may try again at the wheel of the world, and perhaps the wheel will return his wife or his son to him. Perhaps not. Wheels, and worlds, are cruel. Time to the timeless, apples to those who live without hunger. There is nothing so sweet and so bitter, nothing so fine and so sharp.

I am here to tell youWe are all of us just as mighty as planets—and you too,Well let you in, weve got stalwart to spare—But you might have to sleep on the floor.

Remember that the expressions and vocal patterns you are committing to film will become synecdoches... That means something little that stands in for something big. Your smile will stand in for all human happiness. Your tears will be a model for everyone elses sadness. ...You have a responsibility to the people who will repeat your lines, wink your winks, imitate your laughter without knowing they are imitating anything. This is the secret power that actors hold. It is almost like being a god. We create what it is to be human when we stand fifty feet tall on a silk screen.So youd better be good at it, for Gods sake.

Storytelling can save you. Both the telling and the listening.

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.

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

I wont be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction.

Our parents tell us the story of our beginning and they have total control over it--they know theyve changed it, and we know theyve changed it, but we just let them. They massage the details to reflect who we are now, so that there will be a sense to it: you are this because that. We gave you a blanket with birdies on it and now youre a pilot, how lovely! All so that we think of ourselves as being in . . . not just a story, but a good story. One written in full command of their craft. Someone who abides by the contract with the audience, even if the audience is us. Everyone loves a system. Everyone relaxes.

And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules until you are ready to rule yourself.

I shall be as brave as a my Toad, he thought, for my Toad never hides under the bed when she is afraid of lightning or bats. She sticks out her tongue and eats them.

But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time youre half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, its so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else youll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not so many facilities in the world that proveide the kind of services we do. 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.

I do not believe any person is born knowing how to be human. Everyone has to learn their letters and everyone has to learn how to be alive.. . . .Maybe its not a lesson so much as its a magic trick. You can make a little girl into anything if you say the right words. Take her apart until all thats left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. Stitch her up again real good. Now, maybe you get a woman. If youre lucky. If thats 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 whats said to you, doing whats done to you, copying until it comes so natural that even when youre all alone, you keep on cawing __hello, pretty bird__ at the dark.

Of all the Fairy strangeness she had known, this seemed suddenly both the strangest and least strange of all. How she would have liked to be looked after like that, cared for and watched over. And yet at the same time, she understood the Whelk, and wished she could grow big enough to hold on to everyone she loved at once. To keep them safe and with her always and know their secret needs well enough to answer them.

Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall.

A dragon looks like a girl when it is young.

How poor you are, September. You make my heart groan. I know about Homesickness. It begins with H. What will you do?

all children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes.

Now, in the Kingdom of School, to be asked into another childs room is like being asked inside their heart.

Thieves are not so bad, and killing wears all possible costumes. There is no death, no murder that is better than any other. If you can kill me, the manner hardly bears consideration. You want to kill your own father, and you think it will make your sleep easier for the next seventy years if you can say you did it honorably. But your honor is blackened by patricide, and no amount of high-sounding formalities will make it white again.