Catherynne M. Valente Quotes - Page 10

Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.

Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.

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

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.

Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.

Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.

Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.

You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".

Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.

For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.

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.

I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

Death hath no dominion.

The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.