Her heart was bruised by the kiss, smashed and surprised and unsettled by it. September thought kisses were all nice, sweet things… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Once more September marveled that even the Dodo knew what she wanted to be when she was grown. She simply could not… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
We all have someone we think shines so much more than we do that we are not even a moon to their… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
You know, in Fairyland-Above they said that the underworld was full of devils and dragons. But it isn’t so at all! Folk… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
It's saying no. That's your first hint that something's alive. It says no. That's how you know a baby is starting to… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Most of them... most of us never figure it out. Bad dream, they think, or good one. Funny rash, never really goes… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I think that one morning, the Papess woke in her tower, and her blankets were so warm, and the sun was so… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya… — 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
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
I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
I have made calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? You… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb. — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
..what came before has dissolved from me, lost like milk teeth. But I think, rather, that it has always been as it… — 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
