896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

I won't be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction.

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.

This was how it was done: you bare your belly to a great beast and endure trials and it all works itself out. There is a treasure or a sword. Or a woman. And that thing is yours not because you defeated anything, or because your flesh was hard and unyielding, but because you were worthy of it, worthy all along. The trials and the beast were just a way of telling the world you wanted it, and the world asking in her hard way, hard as bones and hollow mountains, if you really and truly did.

Coffee is a kind of magic you can drink.

That's what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home - someday, somehow.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

When one is travelling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it is brigther and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparasion to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.