896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

And honey, everybody eats art and drinks stories. It’s the best drunk there is!

It’s saying no. That’s your first hint that something’s alive. It says no. That’s how you know a baby is starting to turn into a person. They run around saying no all day, throwing their aliveness at everything to see what it’ll stick to. You can’t say no if you don’t have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn’t even want to. No is the heart of thinking.

From that day forward she never used my name. Eventually I forgot it. Mrs. H called me something new. She named me cruel and smirking, she named me not for beauty or for cleverness or for sweetness. She named me a thing I could aspire to but never become, the one thing I was not and could never be: Snow White.

Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven’t you ever heard a story about Koschei? He’s only got the one. Act one, Scene one: pretty girl. Act one, Scene two: pretty girl gone!

How else are you supposed to deal with people who like terrible things? Hit them with a shovel till they stop, that’s how.

I have to know, I have to or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not.

Well!” said Charlotte, and she meant to say something more, something clever, something brave, but she simply had not been prepared to stare down an army of frogs today.

But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.

Snow White swallows that like a sword. She lets the hammer click back into place. Everything in her that’s not nailed down is shaking loose.