896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

The calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and said: “It is right and proper,” he said, “for a girl to read as many books as there are bricks in this city, and then, when she is finished, to begin to write new ones which are made out of the old ones, as this city is made of those stones.

I used to look up at night and dream of the solar system. I know, I know – who didn’t? But your own dreams seem so special, so terribly yours, until you grow up and figure out they’re just like everyone else’s. How perfect and beautiful and silent and dead each planet hung in my heart! All nine names, written in squiggly, shaky handwriting, glowing inside me.

Most people don’t like complexity. They would prefer the world to be simple.

At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, much more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn’t converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food – for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them.

But the Tsar of Death and the Tsar of Life greatly feared one another, for Death is surrounded by souls, and is never lonely, and the Tsar of Life had hidden his death away in a place deeper than secrets, and more secret than depth.

Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless.

I still want to kiss you. To feel the life in you seize on the life in me. Raw and fresh and new.

She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.