True names,โ said September wonderingly. โThese are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you donโt come and they call again but you still donโt come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course, you have to come, and right quick. Because true names have power, like Lye said. But I never told anyone my true name. The Green Wind told me not to. I didnโt understand what he meant, but I do now.
Catherynne M. ValenteReaders will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
Catherynne M. ValenteAnd as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.
Catherynne M. ValenteMost of them... most of us never figure it out. Bad dream, they think, or good one. Funny rash, never really goes away, but Doc says it's fine, nothing to worry about. Why dwell on it? But some people, they just can't let it go... Some people drink themselves out of school trying to find it again, trolling through bars where the shadows are so greasy they leave trails on the walls, just to find a way in, a way through. Some people forget too that you're supposed to stop sleeping, you're supposed to have a life in the sun.
Catherynne M. Valente