unePetiteAile > unePetiteAile's Quotes

“Tamburlaine's house seemed more a place where books kept their people than where people kept their books.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“A map shows maybes.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“We make our worlds of stranger stuff: We choose people who do not annoy us, places of green or glass and steel that feel as alive and necessary as our brothers and sisters, houses in which everything has a place, rules such as Do Not Take Things That Aren’t Yours Unless No One Is Looking and Good Things Happen to Good People and A Year Is 365 Days are agreed upon, even when they aren’t true, perhaps especially so.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“This time I shall not lead you into a new corner of the house of the world. We know it so well by now, after all. We know where the Fairies live and where the shadows fall, where the cobwebs really ought to be cleaned up if anyone ever gets around to it, where a window is loose, where a door creaks. We are annoyed by the stove that will not light, by the weeds in the garden, by that ungodly mess in the closet. A thing too familiar becomes invisible.

It is time for us to Go Out.

But do not fear, even if it is colder outside than you might prefer, if Spring has once again been rudely tardy, if the trees only have a breath of green at their tips like a fine lady's jade rings, if the sun is pale and high and makes you squint, if the wind, for there is always wind, bites and pierces deep. Tug up your best coat round your neck and tie your longest scarf tight. You may hold my hand if you like. I promise, it is good for your health to step outside the house of the world. After all, we are not going far.

Only so far as the mailbox.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“Wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in it's changing and change with it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“What others call you, you become. It’s a terrible magic that everyone can do — so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“So it is written-but so, too, it is crossed out. You can write over it again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer. Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten. It is Grown-Up Magic. Children are heartless; their parents hold them still, squirming and shouting, until a heart can get going in their little lawless wilderness. Teenagers crash their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold. And Grown-Ups, when they are very good, when they are very luck, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“You haven't met your Way yet. It hasn't so much as kissed your hand! You haven't even at the door of the hall where your Way dances. But look here, look see, I've got them, I've caught them up just for you, a big bouquet of anywhere you want to go. Just pick a bloom, my girl, hold it to your pretty nose.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“Just because it's imaginary doesn't mean it isn't real.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“So it is written - but so, too, it is crossed out. You can write it over again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer. Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten. It is Grown-Up Magic. Children are heartless; their parents hold them still, squirming and shouting, until a heart can get going in their little lawless wilderness. Teenagers crash their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold. And Grown-Ups, when they are very good, when they are very lucky, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly and will not obey—just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn't it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

“In my dreams, I never have an age.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We do not know what things look like.
We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Poets are born knowing the language of angels.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light