Cynthia June Long > Cynthia June's Quotes

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“So it is precisely our allergy to repetition in worship that has undercut the counterformative power of Christian worship—because all kinds of secular liturgies shamelessly affirm the good of repetition.”
― James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies): How Worship Works

“And though creative writing as an intellectual exercise may be pursued with profit by anyone, writing as a profession is not a job for amateurs, dilettantes, part-time thinkers, 25-watt feelers, the lazy, the insensitive, or the imitative. It is for the creative, and creativity implies both talent and hard work.”
― Wallace Stegner, On Teaching and Writing Fiction

“The meeting of writer and reader is an intimate act, and it properly takes place in private.”
― Wallace Stegner, On Teaching and Writing Fiction

“The creative writer is compulsively concrete . . . . His fictional house should be haunted by ideas, not inhabited by them; they should flit past the windows after dark, not fill the rooms. The moment anyone tries to make poems or stories of ideas alone he is at the edge of absurdity; he can only harangue, never interest and persuade, because ideas in their conceptual state are simply not dramatic. They have to be put into the form of people and actions . . .”
― Wallace Stegner, On Teaching and Writing Fiction

“Hard writing makes easy reading.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“The writer is more servant than master of his story.”
― John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers

“There was a cheer, and he took his first deep breath for months. He hadn't been aware of breathing shallowly. It had happened gradually; someone had put a penny on his chest every hour since November, and now the weight of thousands of pennies had lifted at once”
― Natasha Pulley

“Under the gas lamps, mist pawed at the windows of the closed shops, which became steadily shabbier nearer home. It was such a smooth ruination that he could have been walking forward through time, watching the same buildings age five years with every step, all still as a museum”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“The Ancient Greeks? If they had steam engines, why didn't they have trains?'
. . .
'They were philosophers; they put two and two together and got a goldfish.'
(p. 76)”
― Natasha Pulley

“People shouldn't be throwing away their history when it's still doing archery practice forty miles up the road.”
― Natasha Pulley

“. . . More octo . . .pi?' Thaniel said, knowing that it sounded wrong, though so did puses and podes. He tried to think where he had heard it last , but he did not often have business with more than one octopus at a time.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“. . .She started to feel a bubble of lightness coming up through her ribs. It had been very fragile at first, but she thought now it was made of something stronger than suds. . .
(p. 121)”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Science had to have some mystery otherwise everyone would find out how simple it was.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“The water in the drains below the cobbles muttered.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“William had played [rugby] at Eton when it first became popular, and now he only spoke of it in a reverent tone he normally saved only for women and rifles. . . . .
[in contrast] Cricket had rules: one was not allowed to stamp on the head of another player and pass it off as enthusiasm.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him. He wished then that he could go back and that the ball had landed on another number. He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn't have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“A man was standing at the end of the hallway, just outside an open door, from where a great light shone, illuminating him almost as a god.”
― John Boyne, The House of Special Purpose

“I did not see the appeal of a wife. We had never had one before. She would not be half as interesting as our buffalo.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“A stepmother is like a bullet you can't dig out. She fires true and she fires hot and she fires so quick that her metal hits your body before you even know there's a fight on.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“I do not believe any person is born knowing how to be human. Everyone has to learn their letters and everyone has to learn how to be alive.
. . . .
Maybe it's not a lesson so much as it's a magic trick. You can make a little girl into anything if you say the right words. Take her apart until all that's left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. Stitch her up again real good. Now, maybe you get a woman. If you're lucky. If that's what you were after. Just as easy to end up with a blackbird or a circus bear or a coyote. Or a parrot, just saying what's said to you, doing what's done to you, copying until it comes so natural that even when you're all alone, you keep on cawing __hello, pretty bird__ at the dark.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“Cocky don't say anything and that's as good as love right about now.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“. . .building is medicine for free.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“Snow White swallows that like a sword. She lets the hammer click back into place. Everything in her that's not nailed down is shaking loose.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“You're grown--crooked and backbent, but grown--and it's time to stop hanging your heart on your mother.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“. . . skeptics, believers, and good croquet players are harder to come by today . . .”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“I think we are only afraid of ourselves," the doctor said slowly.
"No," Luke said. "Of seeing ourselves clearly and without disguise.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“I am sorry. I can not invite you home for Christmas because I am Irish and my family is mad”
― Anne Enright, The Green Road

“This is nothing. And you are nothing.

She took another step, and stumbled. The ground was plummeting downward now.

You are nothing. There was a starving girl. You gave her things and then left her like a beggar on the street, and for what?

There was a couple in the cottage. You could have given them something, but you left. And for what?

There was a dancing girl in the marketplace. You could have helped her, but you left. And for what?

There was a boy and his bird sister. He helped you, and you gave him nothing.

There was a swanskin, and you thought it might make you beautiful.

There were red shoes, and you thought they might make you graceful.

There was a threshold and a magical woods, and you thought they might make you a hero.

There was a boy, and he was your best friend.

Your father left you. You left your mother.

Come, the wind said, and I will blow you away.

Come, the snow said, and I will bury you.

Come, the cold said, and I will embrace you.

Come. Come.

And so she did.”
― Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs