896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

I just want to bethe size of a galaxyso I can eat all the stars and gas giantswithout them noticingand getting upset.Is that so bad? Isn't thatwhat love looks like? Isn't thatwhat you want, too?

It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!

When you are this hungry, you cannot even remember who you used to be, she whispered. Who you might have been, if not for the hunger.

She had a highly developed sense of humor which in some lights looked a bit like a sense of justice.

The oligarchs do not care what justice is, only what seems just. They do not care what mercy is, only what appears merciful. Thus justice and mercy will always escape them.

Old things have strange hungers.

The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner.

In the treaty were provisions for the hundred thousand veterans left maimed and irrevocably mute throughout the city. As is the way of things, their sacred places and comforts have dwindled to a lonely strip of shoreline and a polite nod whenever they are passed in the street.

Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.