Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente
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NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth5 May 1979
CountryUnited States of America
jobs naps games
All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
silence wish littles
Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.
work-out way monsters
Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears.
way made dies
If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.
skeletons needs looks
Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.
brides behinds
Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
queens self class
Here! 'Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.' Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: 'Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.' Now that's quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn't ask for better. It's downright plain-spoken!
mother children kissing
As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.
wise autumn winter
Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter - which is the door of death - but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile.
proud littles looks
Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.
morning feet soldier
Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.
hard-work heart eye
It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
reality four should
You should always listen to minotaurs. Anybody with four stomachs has to have a firm grip on reality.
hero knights years
I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting.