“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
“I’ve always found chess to be a bit too much like real life to provide much enjoyment as a game.” — 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
“A voice saying that other word an alive thing must learn, that other word as necessary to living as taking in fuel… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax,… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Listen, girl, I came to tell you that life is stupid. It just pulls the same shit over and over. Sometimes you… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Robots are like Mars: they need girls. Boys won't do; the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp when they should kiss and… — 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 is the Turing test, [...] It is how we check for life. ” — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons;… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to… — 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
However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Koschei the Deathless made a face as he tasted the wine. “It is far too sweet. Comrade Stalin fears bitterness and has… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Of course, one may have a number of other halves,” Nor said with a grin. “We have always felt sorry for those… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“Sibyl, what do you want?” “I want to live,” the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. “I want to… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire — where the… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“For the wishes of one’s old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
“It is my dearest hope that one day I shall be the one to discover the GUT-the Grand Unified Tale, the one… — 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
“Love is the Turing test, says Ilet when she is eighty and drawing up the plans for a massive, luminous, lonely ship… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death,… — 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
