“I suppose if you have ten children one of them might go into government, which is the same as losing a child… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must.” — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Oh, September. Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost.… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Breaking things heals a great many hurts. This is why children do it so often.” — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Oh, Marya Morevna! Do you know how the church-folk call me, me and my daughter Gamayun, when they paint us on their… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
You can't have whatever you want. But to a child who must ask permission for every single thing, adulthood looks like a… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Children, you must understand, are monsters. They are ravenous, ravening, they lope over the countryside with slavering mouths, seeking love to devour.… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“They have to be born, you know," the Third Rail says. "They don't come from nowhere! When a child sits in her… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Yet humanity could not conceive. It tried and tried, and called mighty wizards from every corner of its earthly kingdom, but no… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Did you see her?" the Marid said nervously, looking at her with great dark eyes. "Our daughter. Standing on the Gear. Dis… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“I wish for my child to have a mind as stark and wild as the winter, a spirit as clear and fine… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“You think I am so wicked, don't you? A monster. Unnatural. How cruel of me to keep you here and rattle on… — 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
