American author (1979- )
It's occasionally refreshing to simply sit with someone who has known you a long while and still thinks you're worth a damn.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Deathless
That's what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It's practically what they're for.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Well, I started out as a poet with no interest in writing fiction at all. Everything I ever learned about writing until after my first novel was published was all in the realm of poetry. So they're very mixed up for me, and I've been accused of passing off poetry as fiction for awhile now.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
interview, Rain Taxi, November 21, 2013
You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you'll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Six-Gun Snow White
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. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Deathless
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Everything in creation is just a trick of the light--the only difference between heaven and hell is who's running those lights, who's got the switch, who knows the cues.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice
A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Secrets seem so important until there's no one left to spill them to.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
If you want to know about the beginning of things, you have to talk to the dead.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
A library is never complete. That's the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Fairyland Series
Longing for the fantastic is a human constant, I think.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
interview, Electric Lit, December 1, 2015
When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
This is how you learn to see: You put together a crew. No one can see a damn thing clearly with only two eyes.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Any story is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
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.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Deathless
The Moon cares nothing for our cute little troubles. She ate a thousand girls for lunch yesterday, and she was hungry again in an hour. She barely even looks at us.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance