896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Tamburlaine’s house seemed more a place where books kept their people than where people kept their books.

I do not want to be human. I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand. I am not a Good Robot. To tell a story about a robot who wants to be human is a distraction. There is no difference. Alive is alive. There is only one verb that matters: to be.

Shadows are where magic comes from. Your dark and dancing self, slipping behind and ahead and around, never quite looking at the sun.

What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your health at two in the afternoon.

Zelda was winter’s best dame: pale and dark with a shimmer of Christmas in her eye, a flash of New Year’s in her laugh.

You’re not in love if you keep your own heart bricked up behind your bones. You’re only playing.

It’s Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.

Don’t worry, my little lump of rock. Everybody gets a chance to choose. Or else where would irony come from?

And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.