What came before has dissolved from me, lost like milk teeth. But I think, rather, that it has always been as it is, and there was never a beforethis nor will there be an afternow. I am accepting. This is not a thing to be solved, or conquered, or destroyed. It is. I am. We are. We conjugate together in darkness, plotting against each other, the Labyrinth to eat me and I to eat it, each to swallow the hard, black opium of the other. We hold orange petals beneath our tongues and seethe. It has always been so. It grinds against me and I bite into its skin.
Catherynne M. ValenteWe like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.
Catherynne M. ValenteI can't imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It's not done! You don't go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn't go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.
Catherynne M. ValenteThat stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the seaโthat stirring landlocked children know so wellโmoved 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. ValenteIโm a monster,โ said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. โEveryone says so.โ The Minotaur glanced up at her. โSo are we all, dear,โ said the Minotaur kindly. โThe thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.
Catherynne M. Valente