Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second theyve got hold of a heart, is to pretend they dont have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted.

A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay

Wishes of ones old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in its changing and change with it.

...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.

I expect everyone in Boston has something like that ring, which is why I am glad I have never been to Boston.

The sun hitched up her trousers and soldiered on up into the sky. September squinted at it and wondered if the sun here was different than the sun in Nebraska. It seemed gentler, more golden, deeper. The shadows it cast seemed more profound. But September could not be sure. When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean that 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.

I have to know, I have to or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not.

And hell, sometimes the best thing is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother. There’s power in that, if you’re after power.

Let me tell you something, kid, said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. Magic is just a word for whats left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.

When the world changes, it stashes us away where we cant make it run the other way again.

Al is the upside down man. Back home, you work all day and night to learn how to paint, learn linseed and cadmium and badger-hair and perspective, which is just math in art-school drag, you know? And maybe you still cant do anything worth phoning the Met over. But hey, getting a boy to fuck you is just the easiest thing since Sunday naps. Up top, getting drunk at a party is what you do when youre all out of art. But in...Canada? Are we calling it Canada now? Ok! Als the King of Canada and he says: fuck that for a lark! The world feels like being a bastard-and-a-half this decade, lets play nine-pins on its grave. Down here its all the same! Kiss a boy and books come out! Ralph up Parthenons into the upstairs toilet! Dance poems, shit showtunes! Art is easy! Pick up genius at the corner shop! Sell your soul and half your shoes for a glass of gin! He looks up at Zelda Fair and his poor goblin face goes all twisted up and desperate. Its all fucked anyway, you see? The end of the world already happened. Its happening all the time. Its gonna happen again. And again after that. Just when you think its done falling on its face, the world picks itself up and throws itself off a roof. Boom. Pavement. The worlds ending forever and ever and were not even allowed to toast at her funeral. So we gotta do something else or she wont know we ever loved her.

there is only this world, as it is now, and there has never been another, can never be any other.

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.

This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. 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 awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else youll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true....This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of ones old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it....Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. 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. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do.

Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each others blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until snow melts between us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase.

But that wouldnt be honest. That wouldnt be real. That would give you the idea that a life is a simple thing to tell, that its obvious where to start--BIRTH--and even more obvious where to stop--DEATH. Fade from black to black. I wont have 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 when they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction. Why, isnt living easy? Isnt it grand? As easy as reading aloud.No.If I slice it all up and stitch it back together, you might not understand what Ive been trying to say all my life: that any story is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it. I cant. I cant tell you that lie...If I fixed it so time goes the way you expect, you might come away thinking I know what the hell Im doing.

you have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.

No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings.

Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. 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.

Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.