Catherynne M. Valente Quotes - Page 3

Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.

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

We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.

Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles - and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.

Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of course, they often have a good deal of trouble with the Quiet.

I have to know, I have to or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not.

And hell, sometimes the best thing is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother. There’s power in that, if you’re after power.

Let me tell you something, kid," said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. "Magic is just a word for what's left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic.

A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic.

So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.

you have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.

We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.

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

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which you’ll learn all about when you’re older and don’t care anymore.