896 Quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

Some who deserve failure do not achieve it,” he sniffed. “Some who deserve nothing are given the world.

But old women faced certain dangers in Fairyland, such as breaking a hip while riding a wild velocipede, or having everyone do what you say just because you had wrinkles.

Think about it, mate: How could a species like that develop the massive technology you need to achieve faster-than-light interstellar travel, yeah? All they do is hunt and eat. They’re just stupid murderlumps or killbots supreme with a side of zombie-mayonnaise. Where’s the nerdy shy Predator scientist who figured out how to build a spaceship while all the big jock Predators were down the pub ripping one another’s spines out, eh? Nowhere, because she don’t exist.

But soon the wine sack was empty, and sleep brushed my ears with her ash-lips.

All coral in every world think of Australia the way that you and I think of Mesopotamia – it is the ancestral paradise of their civilization and they send it Valentines each February.

It was late spring when Marya Morevna slid her brass key into the lock of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, feeling it slide, too, between her own ribs, and open her like a reliquary full of old, nameless bones.

Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous.

A ring don’t make a bride, that’s all.

I opened my door and everything they had for me was tainted because the land of Used-to-Be is just full of ghosts starving for your breath.