The Bread We Eat in Dreams Quotes

“I said: I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Finally, 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, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“I tell them: don’t depend on a woodsman in the third act. I tell them: look for sets of three, or seven. I tell them: there’s always a way to survive. I tell them: you can’t force fidelity. I tell them: don’t make bargains that involve major surgery. I tell them: you don’t have to lie still and wait for someone to tell you how to live. I tell them: it’s all right to push her into the oven. She was going to hurt you. I tell them: she couldn’t help it. She just loved her own children more. I tell them: everyone starts out young and brave. It’s what you do with it that matters. I tell them: you can share that bear with your sister. I tell them: no-one can stay silent forever. I tell them: it’s not your fault. I tell them: mirrors lie. I tell them: you can wear those boots, if you want them. You can lift that sword. It was always your sword. I tell them: the apple has two sides. I tell them: just because he woke you up doesn’t mean you owe him anything. I tell them: his name is Rumplestiltskin.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“She’s an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Thing is, just because you make a body shiver don’t make it yours.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“No," said the demon. "A witch is just a girl who knows her mind. I am better than a witch. But look at the great orgy coming up like a rose around me. No night in Hell could be as bright.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“In my mind I know the name of an ocean the size of everything that was. My mouth can only call it death.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“And in her long nights, in her long house of smoke and miller's stones, she baked the bread we eat in dreams, strangest loaves, her pies full of anguish and days long dead, her fairy-haunted gingerbread, her cakes wet with tears.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“And hell, sometimes the best thing is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother. There’s power in that, if you’re after power.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Listen, everything is possible in here. You can burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom. You can cut your hair before he ever gets the chance to climb up. It is possible to decline the beanstalk. You can let the old witch dance at your wedding, hand out the kind of forgiveness that would wake the dead and sleeping. You can just walk away, get on a horse, and go wake some other maiden from her narrative coffin, if you’re brave, if you’re strong. What do you want? Do you want to escape? Or were you looking for that candy house?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Those Puritans would spice the Gallic stew of upper Maine for years, causing no end of trouble to Agnes, who, to be fair, was a witch and a succubus and everything else they ever called her, but that’s no excuse for being such poor neighbors, when you think about it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“who am i, really? What does any of it mean? i'm so afraid someday everyone will see that i'm just an imposter, a fake, among all the real and gorgeous godheads.
-”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for for Christmas: that the ice should come back”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their names might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of the soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of his soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“It’s important to marry someone, she said. Not because you need them to complete you or because you ought to be someone’s wife by hook or by crook. It’s just that worlds want to combine, they want to marry, and they use people to do it, the way you mix medicine in with something sweet, so it’s easy to swallow. That’s why we have to have all those silly things: a frilly dress and something blue and a bachelor party and a priest. Just so that a boy and a girl can live together and make babies? Posh. Because the big worlds inside us are mating, and they need the pomp.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“The bears, over the years, have developed a primitive but heartfelt Buddhist discipline. Beneath the cinnamon trees they practice the repetition of the Growling Sutra. The”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“I got a heart like a half bottle of no-label whiskey.
Nothing to brag on,
but enough for you, and all your friends, too.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“This 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, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“He ran like if he kept running he could escape the last thousand years.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Greta, Greta, he whispered, eyes shut in rapture, on thy breast I write my Edda, at thy feet I lay the keys of Niflheim, by thy leave alone, I live, and breathe, and die.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“All hands drowned, except the Red Hound of Mykenos, who bit the sea until it spit him back. Old”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“they leave when it’s over, exeunt, pursued by a bear with an empty porridge bowl. If”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“Thing is, just because you make a body shiver don't make it yours.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“I am here to tell you
We are all of us just as mighty as planets—and you too,
We'll let you in, we've got stalwart to spare—
But you might have to sleep on the floor.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“A ring don’t make a bride, that’s all.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“So my name is Scout. Yeah, my mom read To Kill a Mockingbird. Leave it to her to think 5th grade required reading is totally deep.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams