896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between the stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all. Well, it isn’t, really, it isn’t at all, and believing and achieving is just something sportscasters say, but what are you gonna do, not die? Try it. I’ll wait.

You can’t trust just any old person who comes along with a hundred puffins and a pretty face!

He’ll burn you down like wax if you let him. You’ll think it’s love, when he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be.

But when it finally did happen, the alien invasion turned out to be much more like Mr. Looney of the Tunes than Mr. Ridley of the Scott. Point to Nani.

Ceno’s brain, soft and pink with blood – and veined with endless whorls and branches of sapphire threaded through every synapse and neuron, inextricable, snarled, intricate, terrible, fragile and new.

Some switches must be flipped, and some children cannot help turning off to on and on to off, just to see what will happen.

My mistress used to say that you couldn’t ever really be naked unless you wanted to be. She said, ‘Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s quite difficult to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin. And foxes and bears have skin, too, so I shan’t be ashamed if they’re not.

God is another way of talking about the power to break things, that’s all. When you mean to break a goblet or a bone, well, just do it and be done. But when the things to be broken get big enough you have to start talking about God.

No one is a cup for another to drink from.