That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.

Catherynne M. Valente

Categorized in : Children Stars Firefly

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

practice heart two

Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.

Catherynne M. Valente

witch miracle

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.

Catherynne M. Valente

autumn eye reading

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

Catherynne M. Valente

pain heart mean

Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.

Catherynne M. Valente

questions-asked quests journey

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.

Catherynne M. Valente

grief forever morning

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

Catherynne M. Valente

mourning mindfulness today

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

Catherynne M. Valente

madness grace may

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.

Catherynne M. Valente

and-love opposites philosophy

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.

Catherynne M. Valente

girl grief book

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

Catherynne M. Valente

happens

Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.

Catherynne M. Valente

keys

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

Catherynne M. Valente

growth reading heart

Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.

Catherynne M. Valente

metamorphosis profound

Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.

Catherynne M. Valente

prayer stories doe

She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.

Catherynne M. Valente

library sound people

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.

Catherynne M. Valente

stories book way

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

library joy book

She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.

Catherynne M. Valente

stubborn want heart

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

Catherynne M. Valente

home sweet mean