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
True names,” said September wonderingly. “These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don’t come… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The… — 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
... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up… — Catherynne M. Valente Copy Share Image
It’s been me all along,” said September slowly. “Me who gave up my shadow, me who went down into Fairyland-Below and Fairyland-Lower-Than-That… — 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
