896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

You haven’t met your Way yet. It hasn’t so much as kissed your hand! You haven’t even at the door of the hall where your Way dances. But look here, look see, I’ve got them, I’ve caught them up just for you, a big bouquet of anywhere you want to go. Just pick a bloom, my girl, hold it to your pretty nose.

Didn’t you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman’s house.

I savor bitterness – it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.

Things I Will Try to Say More Often: Why? I love you. I’m sorry. May I have chocolate? Yes. yes. yes.

All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending. You throw out murders and reversals and heroes and detectives and spies, juggle love affairs and near escapes and standoffs with marvellous guns, kidnappings and sorcery and comic relief and gravediggers and princesses and albino dragons, and it’s all just to lure an ending into your bed.

Names aren’t loners, they’re connected, even in real life. You name your kids for someone dead or what you hope they will become or what you wish you were and your parents did the same to you and that big, glittering net of names tells the story of the whole world. Names are load-bearing struts. Names are destiny.

English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly and will not obey – just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions.

Forests have secrets,′ he said gently. ‘It’s practically what they’re for. To hide things. To separate one world from another.

In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.