896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Nobody came without their sequins roaring.

How long was it, between the time when you were happy, and the time when you wanted to kill him?

The tyrannosaurus looked a little shamefaced – but only a little, for dinosaurs would rather drown in tar than admit they’re wrong. That unfortunate attitude played a key role in their extinction.

I am Death,” said the creature. “I thought that was obvious.” “But you’re so small!” “Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off – very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.

It takes energy for new roads to diverge in new woods, and no energy is spent with complete efficiency, without waste. Where wood has burned, there will be ash. The waste product of the constantly dividing multiverse is a fine, drifting mist of regret, and no wormhole has ever starved.

A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay.

That’s Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It’s nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.

Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It’s the way of the world.

We make our worlds of stranger stuff: We choose people who do not annoy us, places of green or glass and steel that feel as alive and necessary as our brothers and sisters, houses in which everything has a place, rules such as Do Not Take Things That Aren’t Yours Unless No One Is Looking and Good Things Happen to Good People and A Year Is 365 Days are agreed upon, even when they aren’t true, perhaps especially so.