How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be.
Catherynne M. ValenteYou only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesnโt behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
Catherynne M. ValenteThat's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.
Catherynne M. ValenteJust remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.
Catherynne M. ValenteBut the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been metโthe Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never didโthe woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.
Catherynne M. Valente