American author (1979- )
Even if you've taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It's hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn't being naked, not really. It's just showing skin.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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
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
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
The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Six-Gun Snow White
Longing for the fantastic is a human constant, I think.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
interview, Electric Lit, December 1, 2015
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
All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending. You throw out murders and reversals and heroes and detectives and spies, juggle love affairs and near escapes and standoffs with marvellous guns, kidnappings and sorcery and comic relief and gravediggers and princesses and albino dragons, and it's all just to lure an ending into your bed.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
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
Being on time is a filthy habit practised only by roosters and retirees.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Secrets seem so important until there's no one left to spill them to.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Fairyland Series
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
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
If you want to know about the beginning of things, you have to talk to the dead.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
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
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Any story is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
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
An ending means there is order in the universe, there is a purpose to events. There is a reason to do things, an answer to be found, a solution key at the back of the book that maps to the problems posed. Find one ending, a real ending, and the universe is redeemed, ransomed from death--but death can never be that ending. It is a cheat, a quick shock, but no story truly ends with death. A death only begs more questions, more tales.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance