01c. 1979 ADHowever wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
02c. 1979 ADI do not serve your personal issues, Morevna. I serve the People, and the People will have crimes against their body answered. You fought at Leningrad. So did I. Why should he be spared?''Somebody ought to be.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
03c. 1979 ADIf he closed his eyes he could dwell in the circuit of air that had once held her, he could hold his breath and be inside her again, within the close and burning borders of her- she stood here, washed her hair in this sink, wrote upon this wall, ate roasted chicken at this table. There was no place he could enter where she had not also been, her echoes hanging in the air like pages hung to dry. No place that did not suppurate in her absence, which was not ringed with the light of her old selves, like film burned with a cigarette.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
04c. 1979 ADThe burnt-off connectors and shadows where Ravan once filled my spaces— those, I think, are the sensations of grief.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
05c. 1979 ADThat'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 / quote ↗
06c. 1979 ADThis is not a lie: Memory has the taste and texture of cooked meat. Eat it and live. Remember, but only what it is licit to remember.In Aerograd, the word for meat and memory are the same.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
07c. 1979 ADMemory is like that. It alters itself so that girlsare always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
08c. 1979 ADPerhaps memory is a thing that everyone involved has to work at, like stitching up a big quilt out of everything that ever happened to you.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
10c. 1979 ADYes, Marya thought, the smell of woodsmoke and old snow pushing back her long black hair. Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
11c. 1979 ADWhen you argue with verve in your saddlebags, you are extremely alive. That is why you yell and holler and shake your fist — could there be anything sweeter than convincing someone to see the world your way? What else is talking for, or jokes, or stories, or battles? The Loudest Magic, and how I loved it.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
12c. 1979 ADThat is the trouble with standing up to people, of course. Once you start doing it, you can hardly stop.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
13c. 1979 ADSometimes, magic is like that. It lands on your head like a piano, a stupid, ancient, unfunny joke, and you spend the rest of your life picking sharps and flats out of your hair.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
14c. 1979 ADMagic has a logic, like algebra. Once you get to know it, it's easy. If this, then that. You write with a pencil, you don't make frog soup with it.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
15c. 1979 ADAll Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
16c. 1979 ADDo you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you ever wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?...Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
17c. 1979 ADTime is the only magic, he said, "And Marids swim through time like the sea. Think: if you hurt yourself, and I bandage it, and after weeks and weeks it gets well and there's no scar, that's not magic at all. But if you hurt yourself and I touch you and it heals in a moment, you'd call me magic before your skin closed. It's not magic to cook a feast, roasting and baking and frying for hours, but if you blink and it's steaming in front of you, it's a spell. If you work for what you want and save for it and plan it out just as precisely as you possibly can, it's not even surprising if you get it on the other side of a month or a year. But if you snap your fingers and it happens as soon as you want t, every wizard will want to know you socially. If you life straight through a hundred years and watch yourself unfold at one second per second, one hour per hour, that's just being alive. If you go faster, you're a time traveler. If you jump over your unfolding and see how it all comes out, that's fate. But's all healing and cooking and planning and living, just the same. The only difference is time.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
19c. 1979 ADMusic has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
20c. 1979 ADSqueeze 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1979 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
22c. 1979 ADWhy do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them.""They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
23c. 1979 ADWelcome to the American sector! Feast your eyes on glorious Pluto, her wild frontier, her high standard of living, her rugged, hardworking citizens, her purple mountains majesty! Ride the mighty buffalo! Marvel at the bustling industry of the great cities of Jizo and Ascalaphus! Climb the peaks of Mt. Orcus and Mt. Chernobog!Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
24c. 1979 ADFinally, she said: “I’m lonely” — it’s weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can’t help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you’re confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: “I’m lonely,” and they ate her in the street.Catherynne M. Valente / quote ↗
