110+ Catherynne M. Valente Quotes On Friendship, Education And Imaginative

Catherynne M. Valente is an American novelist and poet. She is best known for her work in both fantasy and science fiction, often combining the two genres in her writing. She has written numerous novels, short stories, and poetry collections, and has won numerous awards for her work. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Catherynne M. Valente on love, life, friendship.

Top 10 Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

1. 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.
2. Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
3. That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.
4. Never trust anyone under one hundred!
5. Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
6. When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
7. Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
8. Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.
9. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
10. Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.

Catherynne M. Valente Short Quotes

• We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
• It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
• Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.
• Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
• We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.
• I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.
• You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.
• If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.
• Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
• I am the Walker and the Maze.

Catherynne M. Valente Quotes About Love

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. — Catherynne M. Valente

Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships. — Catherynne M. Valente

One of the many quotes on love..."Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool; something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance. — Catherynne M. Valente

The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do. — Catherynne M. Valente

I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough. — Catherynne M. Valente

Love rarely waits for permission. — Catherynne M. Valente

Well enough. I won't ask you if your love is true or any of that rot—it's not my place to judge. After all, I'm a naked woman chained to a wall; I've no business questioning the lifestyles of wine-makers or anyone else. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

Truly, Autumn is my season,” the scarlet beast chorted. “Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love. — Catherynne M. Valente

Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago. — Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Quotes About Life

I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire — where the old world looked at a woman alone and immortal and said: she must long to die, I have tried to say: look at her live! — Catherynne M. Valente

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

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard 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. — Catherynne M. Valente

How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be. — Catherynne M. Valente

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God? — Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente Famous Quotes And Sayings

That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines. — Catherynne M. Valente

Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, and that her mother would still love her even though she hadn’t waved goodbye. For one day her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn’t been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else. — Catherynne M. Valente

You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live. — Catherynne M. Valente

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you. — Catherynne M. Valente

There's more than one way between your world and ours. There's the changeling road, and there's the Ravishing, and there's those that Stumble through a gap in the hedgerows or a mushroom ring or a tornado or a wardrobe full of winter coats. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower—" At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes. "Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way. — Catherynne M. Valente

Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble. — Catherynne M. Valente

When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up." "Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day. — Catherynne M. Valente

Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to. — Catherynne M. Valente

September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit. — Catherynne M. Valente

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean 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. — Catherynne M. Valente

September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed voices, as if the words could make things happen just by being spoken, as if they were fairy words, and had to be handled just so. — Catherynne M. Valente

Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb. — Catherynne M. Valente

Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you. — Catherynne M. Valente

But this is a story, and in a story there is always someone beautiful enough." - 'The Girl with Two Skins' from A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects — Catherynne M. Valente

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world. — Catherynne M. Valente

Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory. — Catherynne M. Valente

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted. — Catherynne M. Valente

You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece. — Catherynne M. Valente

When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bright; it isn't like that. Forever is cold and hard and final. — Catherynne M. Valente

The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off. — Catherynne M. Valente

Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither. — Catherynne M. Valente

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach. — Catherynne M. Valente

... 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

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

All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics. — Catherynne M. Valente

Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume? — Catherynne M. Valente

…everything has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all. — Catherynne M. Valente

You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost. — Catherynne M. Valente

September could see it. She did not know what is was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

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

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow. — Catherynne M. Valente

Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention! — Catherynne M. Valente

You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews. — Catherynne M. Valente

You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do. — Catherynne M. Valente

...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat. — Catherynne M. Valente

Woman! Come out! I have—" She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils. — Catherynne M. Valente

When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another. — Catherynne M. Valente

I have terrible nightmares, you know. Every night when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hatstand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies and still, I cannot sleep. — Catherynne M. Valente

But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt. — Catherynne M. Valente

I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. — Catherynne M. Valente

Someone ought to write a novel about me. — Catherynne M. Valente

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

I am freedom and I will eat your heart — Catherynne M. Valente

Death hath no dominion. — Catherynne M. Valente

The storm ate up September’s cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are. — Catherynne M. Valente

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. — Catherynne M. Valente

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians. — Catherynne M. Valente

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it. — Catherynne M. Valente

We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful. — Catherynne M. Valente

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad. — Catherynne M. Valente

After love, no one is what they were before. — Catherynne M. Valente

Because I’m a cat. A big one, the Panther of Rough Storms, in fact. But still a cat. If there’s a saucer of milk to spill, I’d rather spill it than let it lie. If my mistress grows absent-minded and leaves a ball of yarn about, I’ll bat it between my paws, and unravel it. Because it’s fun. Because it’s what cats do best. — Catherynne M. Valente

At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity. — Catherynne M. Valente

I'm not lost, because I haven't any idea where to go that I might get lost on the way to. I'd like to get lost, because then I'd know where I was going, you see. — Catherynne M. Valente

Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever. — Catherynne M. Valente

I've always had enough, even if my enough and your enough are as different as an elephant and a minaret. — Catherynne M. Valente

It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it. — Catherynne M. Valente

Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from. — Catherynne M. Valente

In his own country, Death can be kind. — Catherynne M. Valente

It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance. — Catherynne M. Valente

It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say. — Catherynne M. Valente

The future is a messy, motley business, little girl. — Catherynne M. Valente

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. — Catherynne M. Valente

To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them. — Catherynne M. Valente

...For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness. — Catherynne M. Valente

That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead. — Catherynne M. Valente

She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death. — Catherynne M. Valente

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead. — Catherynne M. Valente

I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased. — Catherynne M. Valente

She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand. — Catherynne M. Valente

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike. — Catherynne M. Valente

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

She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people. — Catherynne M. Valente

Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone. — Catherynne M. Valente

Life Lessons by Catherynne M. Valente

1. Catherynne M. Valente's work emphasizes the power of storytelling to bring people together and create meaningful connections.
2. Her work also highlights the importance of embracing diversity and celebrating the beauty of different cultures and perspectives.
3. Finally, her work serves as a reminder that we can find strength in our own unique stories and experiences.