Catherynne M. Valente
I have always been delighted when told there was a piece of fanfic inspired by a book of mine floating about. I don't read it for legal reasons, but I'm thrilled to know it's there. Someone cared. Someone loved it enough to spend their free time writing about it for free.Collection: Legal
Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears and are thus inherently incredibly interesting and powerful.
No matter what you write, you actually can't help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.
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.
Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life.
Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me something different to light a fire under me.
I try to hurt myself, to sprain something, writing every novel and story, because I'm stretching for something new and difficult that I haven't done before.
Everyone has a right to cry uncle on a genre every once in awhile. I've done it myself. Sometimes you just can't bear another gear or pair of wings or vampire teeth. You go on a fast, and sometimes you come back, and sometimes you don't.
Just about every science whiz can tell you how he or she took apart the TV or the radio when they were kids just to see how it worked. To see what the world was made of. Well, when I was a kid, I took apart fairy tales to see how they worked. To see what the world was made of.
You can't have whatever you want. But to a child who must ask permission for every single thing, adulthood looks like a constant parade of every desire's satisfaction. It is a heady and terrifying place. It is the Otherworld. It is Fairyland. In fantasy, we make this literal.
It seems like every few years a big name author will holler something about how evil, heinous, and morally wrong fan fiction and fan fiction writers are, and then the Internet gets all upset and shocked, and then the author is shocked that people could get so upset.
I'm very touchy feely with my fandom, in part because they've never done me wrong or hurt me in any way. This is an awesome balance. I hope it stays that way forever.
For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play in our worlds with any frequency. The problem for us is getting people to read and care about our books that much in the first place.
Vampires should be pretty much like mean girls, all the time, only amazing at it. Flawless. They've had time.
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.Collection: Heart
Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.Collection: Miracle
Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.Collection: Perfect
I am freedom and I will eat your heartCollection: Heart
Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.Collection: Journey
At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, much more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn't converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them.Collection: Philosophy
Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.Collection: Strong
A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.Collection: Book
Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.Collection: Reading
All things are strange which are worth knowing.Collection: Knowing
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.Collection: Travel
Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.Collection: Letting Go
If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.Collection: Knives
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.Collection: Reading
You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.Collection: Morning
Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.Collection: Book
She was beautiful and terrifying, savage and pure.Collection: Beautiful
Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.Collection: Profound
...For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.Collection: Grace
I think that one morning, the Papess woke in her tower, and her blankets were so warm, and the sun was so golden, she could not bear it. I think she woke, and dressed, and washed her face in cold water, and rubbed her shaven head. I think she walked among her sisters, and for the first time saw that they were so beautiful, and she loved them. I think she woke up one morning of all her mornings, and found that her heart was as white as a silkworm, and the sun was clear as glass on her brow, and she believed then that she could live, and hold peace in her hand like a pearl.Collection: Beautiful
It's saying no. That's your first hint that something's alive. It says no. That's how you know a baby is starting to turn into a person. They run around saying no all day, throwing their aliveness at everything to see what it'll stick to. You can't say no if you don't have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn't even want to. No is the heart of thinking.Collection: Running
But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.Collection: Heart
Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.Collection: Animal
I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.Collection: Communication
I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.Collection: Selfish
I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.Collection: Warm
Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention!Collection: Girl
A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.Collection: Labyrinth
Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.Collection: Snow
In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.Collection: War
Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.Collection: Missing
And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.Collection: Thinking
The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.Collection: Country
Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.Collection: Laughter
Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Hero