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Catherynne M. Valente Biography

Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, the World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies Salon Fantastique and Paper Cities, along with numerous Year's Best volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the International Journal of the Humanities as well as in numerous essay collections.

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Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.

Fall, Filled Up, Seemed, Sight, Silk

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.

Die, Dies, Living, Made, Sink, Way

Truly, Autumn is my season,” the scarlet beast chorted. “Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.

Fall, Love, Spring, Summer, Winter

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".

Given, Night, Sleep, Told, Winter

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.

Events, Needs, Skeletons, Stories, Trial, World

These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.

Book, Brute, Girl, Grail, Grief, Lovers

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

Cut, Cutting, Falling In Love, I Love You, Like, Love

At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.

Creativity, Misbehave, Sibling, Siblings, Things, Towers

. . . For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.

Briefly, Grace, Madness, May

Death stands behind every bride, every groom.

Behinds, Bride, Brides, Death, Groom, Stands

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.

Blood, Color, Incomprehensible, Law, Laws, Shape

It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Growth, Heart, Like, Nothing, Reading

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

Eventually, Friends, Happens, Leave, Practically

A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.

Add, Book, Collection, Joy, Library

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.

Bird, Fall, Girl, Point, Thought, Thousand

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.

Children, Slurp, Socks, Stomach, Strong, Wine

One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for awhile yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

Come, Kisses, Kissing, Sleep, Today, Wind

The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.

Business, Girl, Littles, Messy

Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?

Alchemists, Dream, Fool, Girl, Pots, Thinking

The world is not made of countries and outsiders. We are all just humans, and most of us fools and all of us longing for more than we have, to know more than we know--and yet even that is not enough, for if we knew everything we would only be disappointed that there was not one more secret to uncover.

Country, Disappointed, Secret, Uncover, World

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