I don’t want to be a Princess,” she said finally. “You can’t make me be one.” She knew very well what became… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“When a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening,… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Love was a magic fairy spell. Didn't the girls in my books hunt after love like it was a deer with a… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
It seems like every few years a big name author will holler something about how evil, heinous, and morally wrong fan fiction… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“I’ve read science fiction and fantasy all my life – though when you’re a child, they just call that “books.” The first… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Where once September seemed merely and quietly odd, staring out the window during Mathematics lectures and reading big colorful books under her… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I have always been delighted when told there was a piece of fanfic inspired by a book of mine floating about. I… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting,… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“what did you think you were doing, then, when you went up through one door and down through another, turning this way… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“So my name is Scout. Yeah, my mom read To Kill a Mockingbird. Leave it to her to think 5th grade required… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?" sleeve asked primly. The Calligrapher coughed, for… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“You poor girl, what sort of aged, unfriendly Libraries have you met in short life? A silent Library is a sad Library… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“The keeping of lists was for November an exercise kin to repeating of a rosary. She considered it neither obsessive nor compulsive,… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“I have tried to be a generous narrator and care for my girl as best I can. I cannot help that readers… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“One: A Library Is the Size of the Universe and the Universe Is the Size of a Library. Two: Everyone Is Looking… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up." "Men are no good… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“You couldn't ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“He considers it for a moment and spits out the seeds, which sprout, quickly, into tiny junkblossoms sizzling with recursive algorithms. The algorithms wriggle… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.” — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“The cicada lies in the earth for seventeen years. It is warm and dark there, it is soft and wet. Its little legs curl… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Her heart was bruised by the kiss, smashed and surprised and unsettled by it. September thought kisses were all nice, sweet things asked for… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“September put her hand on the grip of the Rivet Gun. She’d only just gotten it, and she’d promised to take copious notes for… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“You see, the future is a kind of stew, a soup, a vichyssoise of the present and the past. That's how you get the… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
