Abby > Abby's Quotes

“A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens are uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can't-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“OMG. He's a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He's the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He's the most/astounding arrangement of molecules ever!/Just look at those tights! An honest-to-God prince at last.”
― Ron Koertge, Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses

“He was like a seed still tethered to the withered flower, just waiting for the dead air of the late summer evening to break, for the storm to begin.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“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

“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

“I've always thought it nonsense to believe something true simply because it was written in a book long ago.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“The heart is a complicated thing, and we're capable of many loves, though we're told that we must value one to the exclusion of others...You can be loyal to your husband at the same time that you take a lover for your own sake, though the poets tell us this is wrong. But why should we believe that the poets understand us better than we do ourselves?”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.
They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?”
― Michael Moore

“A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden

“The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it? ”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“An uncredited study she read once said, quote, “Girls become really stupid in science after they get their period, so you’d better learn as much as possible before that happens.” I had such anxiety about this “clearly proven” biological fact that I was studying calculus by the age of twelve. When I finally got my period, I cried, not because I was growing up, but because I had just learned derivatives and really enjoyed doing them. I was scared that estrogen would wipe the ability to do them from my brain.”
― Felicia Day, You're Never Weird on the Internet

“The internet is amazing because it connects us with one another. But it’s also horrific because . . . it connects us with one another.”
― Felicia Day, You're Never Weird on the Internet

“You have ink in your blood, boy, and no help for it. Books will never be just a business to you.”
― Rachel Caine, Ink and Bone

“The truth is...you're only as invisible as you feel, imaginary or not.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“Sometimes imaginary troubles are harder to bear than actual ones.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“This, I thought, was why the bees and birds landed on him--he clearly had a whole world inside him with rivers of honey and a heart made from flowers. Bernard was just like a closed bud, an acorn with a tree inside, a song yet to be heard.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“She realized she'd been thinking for years that she would not truly be pleased until she'd checked off this last achievement on her list, but one of the dangers of such thinking is that the event one hopes for never quite lives up to the expectation.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Troupe

“So, what you're saying is, just because a warrior is a woman doesn't mean they yhave to wear a chain mail bikini? Like, they could wear...real armor?”
― Jeremy Whitley, Princeless, Vol. 1: Save Yourself

“Narrators may go where they please.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

“No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

“The tales lovers tell each other about how they met are hushed and secret things. They change year by year, for we all meet many times as we grow up and become different and new and exciting people--and this never stops, even for a minute, even when we are ninety.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

“Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 6

“The real world. The very notion is absurd. Worlds and everything in them are made real by the stories that inhabit them.”
― Jonathan Auxier, Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard