Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente
...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth5 May 1979
CountryUnited States of America
moon thinking space
We all have someone we think shines so much more than we do that we are not even a moon to their sun, but a dead little rock floating in space next to their gold and their blaze.
girl fall bird
But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.
kissing soon-enough worry
Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.
irony humans built
You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
brain
Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.
girl yarn track
Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.
memories childhood luck
If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life.
wall wine love-is
Well enough. I won't ask you if your love is true or any of that rot—it's not my place to judge. After all, I'm a naked woman chained to a wall; I've no business questioning the lifestyles of wine-makers or anyone else.
waiting tears irony
You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
jealous years secret
It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.
war
No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.
heart years glasses
I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.
lovely ships sides
Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships.
trying doe world
Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It's the way of the world.