You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".
Catherynne M. ValenteShe knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
Catherynne M. ValenteYou will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
Catherynne M. ValenteThat'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.
Catherynne M. Valente