Catherynne M. Valente quotes:

Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life.

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.

Vampires should be pretty much like mean girls, all the time, only amazing at it. Flawless. They've had time.

Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.

I have always been delighted when told there was a piece of fanfic inspired by a book of mine floating about. I don't read it for legal reasons, but I'm thrilled to know it's there. Someone cared. Someone loved it enough to spend their free time writing about it for free.

For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play in our worlds with any frequency. The problem for us is getting people to read and care about our books that much in the first place.

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

8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for for Christmas: that the ice should come back

It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears and are thus inherently incredibly interesting and powerful.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone you do not make them tell war stories.

I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.

I got a heart like a half bottle of no-label whiskey.Nothing to brag on,but enough for you, and all your friends, too.

Dreams keep the heart alive.

I'm gonna be good at something other than marrying, darlings. Besides, I don't want them. I don't even wanna screw them, how am I gonna marry them?

You can't have whatever you want. But to a child who must ask permission for every single thing, adulthood looks like a constant parade of every desire's satisfaction. It is a heady and terrifying place. It is the Otherworld. It is Fairyland. In fantasy, we make this literal.

I try to hurt myself, to sprain something, writing every novel and story, because I'm stretching for something new and difficult that I haven't done before.

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me something different to light a fire under me.

War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.

The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner.

The war is always going badly.

Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story.

A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't 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

Even if you hadn't entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn't even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you'd been far more careful about leaving your toys strewn about everywhere when you tire yourself out with anarchy and run on home, I'd say you really are the lowest sort.

I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies - and those bodies were so dear to me!

Death stands behind every bride, every groom.

But she never could keep it straight. All the letters, the acronyms, the codes, the colors, changing like musical chairs, every week, every month. Games demons play. It meant nothing to her, except in a charming sort of way, as it had when Naganya wanted to play at interrogation, while the rest of them wanted chess.

...the villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne."

Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share. That's lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.

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

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

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.

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am freedom and I will eat your heart

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

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.

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 am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.

I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.

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.

We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.

If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.

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

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.

Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.

You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.

I can't imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It's not done! You don't go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn't go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.

Never trust anyone under one hundred!

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

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!

They climbed their ladders to wheedle and prune the trees into holiness

Truly, Autumn is my season, the scarlet beast chortedSpring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.

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

Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears.

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.

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.

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

It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!

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

Anything is a poem if you say it often enough.

I'm very touchy feely with my fandom, in part because they've never done me wrong or hurt me in any way. This is an awesome balance. I hope it stays that way forever.

You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.

Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.

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.

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.

Robots are like Mars: they needgirls. Boys won't do;the memesoup is all wrong. They stompwhen they should kissand they're none too keenon having things shoved inside them...It's not a robotuntil you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like that. A junkyard the Company forgot to put a girl in.

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.

... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.

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

Love me, and I will laugh for you, and if you can make me laugh, my laughter will, quite simply, ransom the whole of the world from death.

What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.

All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.

She was ... unhappy. It was part of her, you could not separate her from it. She was sad the way a horse is strong or a bird flies.

Because it's my fault, you see. I did it. And you must always clean up your own messes, even when your messes look just like you and curtsy very viciously when what they mean is, I am going to make trouble forever and ever.

Trouble is, most times, when you go looking to sell your soul, nobody's buying.

He didn't even know how to talk about it. He had practiced not talking about the things he knew until no man could be called his equal.

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

The oligarchs do not care what justice is, only what seems just. They do not care what mercy is, only what appears merciful. Thus justice and mercy will always escape them.

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.

All things are strange which are worth knowing.

Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of course, they often have a good deal of trouble with the Quiet.

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.

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

Do you think, if Columbus had stood on the bow of his ship, looked at the New World and understood everything to come, all the disease and death and betrayal, all the ugliness, all the blood - do you think he would have embraced it, called it paradise?

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.

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

Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.

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.

All stories must end so, with the next tale winking out of the corners of the last pages, promising more, promising moonlight and dancing and revels, if only you will come back when spring comes again.

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".

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.

It seems like every few years a big name author will holler something about how evil, heinous, and morally wrong fan fiction and fan fiction writers are, and then the Internet gets all upset and shocked, and then the author is shocked that people could get so upset.

No matter what you write, you actually can't help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.

Just about every science whiz can tell you how he or she took apart the TV or the radio when they were kids just to see how it worked. To see what the world was made of. Well, when I was a kid, I took apart fairy tales to see how they worked. To see what the world was made of.

It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.

Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.

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

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.