896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Over in the refrigerated section hang lies told so long ago and so often that they turned into the truth and get taught in history books.

Marya supposed this was why no one asked after stolen fairy tale girls. What embarrassments they turn out to be. They grow tempers; they join the army; they need glasses. Who wants them?

The thing I hate about being dead is you can’t move on. I was in love with him when I died, so I’ll be in love with him till the sun burns out.

I did not see the appeal of a wife. We had never had one before. She would not be half as interesting as our buffalo.

All our precontact simulations categorized you as a Down-to-Clown Unflappable Guy Who Can Handle This Sort of Thing No Problem with a high probability of Being Actually into It All the Way.

And in her long nights, in her long house of smoke and miller’s stones, she baked the bread we eat in dreams, strangest loaves, her pies full of anguish and days long dead, her fairy-haunted gingerbread, her cakes wet with tears.

I wish for my child to have a mind as stark and wild as the winter, a spirit as clear and fine as my window, and a heart as red and open as my wounded hand.

One of her dearest and handsomest friends was a sorcerer, and from him she had learned so much magic even her hairpins got up and started living serious-minded lives, writing hairpin-ballads, celebrating hairpin-holidays, and inventing several new schools of philosophy.

The point’s not what it costs; it’s what it costs you. Everything you have. That’s my price, that’s my prize, that’s my ransom, and that’s my rune. The only price in the world that matters is the one that hurts to pay.