Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

“I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.”

“You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair.”

“You look like a winter night”, he had told her when he had given it to her. “I could sleep inside the cold of you”.”

“Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.”

“You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.”

“Cosmetics are an extension of the will. ”

“She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.”

“I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.”

“Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature.”

“War is not for winning, Masha,” sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. “It is for surviving.”

“But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.”

“A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders.”

“Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.”

“You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”

“That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”

“I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.”

“I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”

“And on my life I would never suggest to you that stories cannot be forgotten in the bone, even when a brother or a wizard or a rifle says you must, you must forget it, it never happened; there is only the world as it is now, and there has never been another, can never be any other.”

“I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”

“You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.”