896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Lawlessness doesn’t mean there’s no law, you know, it just means that there are a lot of different laws slugging it out in the streets, and none of them have come out on top yet.

Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist.

I didn’t want to do my mathematics homework back home. Or mend the fence or mind the chickens. But I did it anyway. Just because a person doesn’t want to do a thing doesn’t mean they ought to shirk.

Time is no one’s friend – time has no social niceties and holds the door for nobody nowhere. But I hold the door for time, with my one good paw.

As you swallow the cow’s tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man.

I wanted to write about a postapocalyptic world where our civilization was not looked back on with awe and admiration, as it is in so many books of the genre, but disdained as the fuckwits we are, who wrecked a perfect biosphere because we couldn’t be bothered not to.

Wishes of one’s old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in it’s changing and change with it.

The nearness of him crushed her, like being held by the sun.

Everyone Is Looking for a Book Strong Enough to Change Them.