896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

You can be innocent again. It's not true, what they say, that you can never get it back. You can. It's only that most folk cannot be bothered.

I don’t want to be a Princess,” she said finally. “You can’t make me be one.” She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing.

But this is a story,and in a storythere is always someonebeautiful enough."- 'The Girl with Two Skins' from A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects

The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home.

Do you know what a thirteen-year-old girl can do when she is alone and frightened and believes she is right?

They want only their private toys and candies, and will not share.

It was closing in on midnight, the kind of midnight you only get on Uranus after a three day bender. Ultramarine fog reeking of ethanol and neon and some passing whore's rosewater. Snow piled up like bodies in tbhe street. Twenty-seven moons lighting up what ought to be a respectable witching hour so you can't help but see yourself staring back in every slick glowpink skyscraper.

I wouldn't even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you'd do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.

Narrators may go where they please.