Vampires should be pretty much like mean girls, all the time, only amazing at it. Flawless. They've had time. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
September knew a number of curse words, most of which she heard the girls at school saying in the bathrooms, in hushed… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Do you know, we're right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
But this is a story, and in a story there is always someone beautiful enough." - 'The Girl with Two Skins' from… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings.… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
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;… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. ”I have come for the girl… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute… — 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