896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.

You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".

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

One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for awhile yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens.

Never trust anyone under one hundred!