Catherynne M. Valente World Quotations

Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It's the way of the world.

There's more than one way between your world and ours. There's the changeling road, and there's the Ravishing, and there's those that Stumble through a gap in the hedgerows or a mushroom ring or a tornado or a wardrobe full of winter coats.

That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.

A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.

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.

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.

The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.