896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Endings are rubbish. No such thing. Never has been, never will be. There is only the place where you choose to stop talking. Everything else goes on forever.

And my cases end like all stories end: with a sunset, and a kiss, and redemption, and iron shoes, and a sear of light from the shadows, a gun-muzzle flash that illuminates everything as the rain just keeps coming down in the motley, several-colored light of the back end of the world.

In the beginning there was Dust, and in the end there will be Dust, and in the middle there is Dust, Dust, Dust!

But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be plumped up again--after all, it was only a bit thirsty for something to do.

All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending. You throw out murders and reversals and heroes and detectives and spies, juggle love affairs and near escapes and standoffs with marvellous guns, kidnappings and sorcery and comic relief and gravediggers and princesses and albino dragons, and it's all just to lure an ending into your bed.

Endings are lush and lascivious, Vince; they call to me. All spread out on satin inevitabilities, waiting, beckoning, promising impossibly, obscenely elegant solutions—if you've been a good lad and dressed the house just so, for its comfort, for its arousal. All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is must a long seduction of the ending.

Luck is a finite and rare substance in the universe, like palladium or cobalt. To use it, you have to take it from somebody else.

I'm not afraid of you!' The wombat yelled. 'I saw you get stuck in the washing machine once. Round and round you went! Who's afraid of something that can't defeat a rinse cycle?

I shall be as brave as a my Toad, he thought, for my Toad never hides under the bed when she is afraid of lightning or bats. She sticks out her tongue and eats them.