The Glass Town Game Quotes

“Is it really a cage if it’s the size of the world?” “Yes,” said Emily, Charlotte, and Anne together, rather more loudly than any of them expected.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“You couldn't ever really fix a sad story. You could only make another. And another. And another, until you found the right one at last, the one that ends in joy.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“A tongue is very like a gun, which is why they nearly rhyme. Both can be fired to devastating effect, for good or evil, and both can explode in your hands, wounding your comrades instead of your enemies.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Leftenant Gravey settled his wooden hand kindly on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Don’t let them do that to you, you nor your sister.” How had she never noticed that Gravey had such a lovely Northern accent, so like Tabitha’s? “Let who do what, Leftenant?” “Men. Dazzle you. They do it for advantage, no different from a field marshal gaining the high ground. You do the dazzling. You climb the hill. Or else you’ll be stuck down in the muddy marsh with the rest of us, and that’s no place to be.” “But I don’t know how to dazzle. I couldn’t dazzle a house fern.” Gravey kissed her forehead. He smelled like a warm autumn bonfire sparkling away. “Learn fast,” he said.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Well!” said Charlotte, and she meant to say something more, something clever, something brave, but she simply had not been prepared to stare down an army of frogs today.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“No one’s good just from being born any place.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“It’s the most marvelous and terrible thing in the world. Everyone, but everyone, is pretending to be someone else.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“You can't fix a bad man like a bad staircase.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“He was the one who'd come back to life not fifteen minutes ago. Whenever he got sick at home, Aunt Elizabeth and Tabitha made a tremendous fuss with hot water bottles and tinctures and sweets and kisses. It only stood to reason that they should all make an extra-tremendous fuss now. After all, when you rose from the grave in England, people tended to make whole religions out of you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“We’ve only just found each other! You cannot condemn me to live without you! Would you really go so soon, and leave me? Never to return, or if you did, only after an agony of waiting you should wish on no man! And how should I greet thee, after long years? With silence, and tears! My heart will break, yet brokenly live on!” “Stop quoting yourself!” Emily snapped. “You were! You were going to trap me here in Glass Town all for yourself! You’d steal my father and my aunt and my home away! You would make this whole beautiful world into a cage to hold me fast.” “No, Ellis—Emily! I would love you! I would be your husband!” “I’m ten!” “So?” shouted Lord Byron desperately. “I’m eleven! Emily, my darling, don’t be so dramatic.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“They knew all about the war with France from Papa’s magazines. But whenever they tried to imagine what a war was actually like, it unfolded in their heads like a cross between a chess game, a horse race, a country dance, and a very racy night at the theater.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Who were you? When you were alive?” Emily said, her voice thick with wonder. “Tell me everything.” “Oh, I wasn’t anybody. Just a girl. I lived in a house like girls do. I loved a man once, loved him so much I couldn’t tell the difference between him and me. But he wasn’t the kind of man anyone should love. He took my heart and he took it and pinched it to death. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. So I married someone else and had a child, like girls do. But my heart stayed pinched. Every time I tell the story, people swoon and say it’s dreadfully romantic, but it was horrible and I died halfway through my own story! I don’t know what’s wrong with the living! They think the blackest, most poisonous things are romantic. At least he’s dead now, too. He tries to talk to me but I stick my fingers in my ears until he goes away.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Being the oldest sometimes meant being everyone's boss, but mostly, it meant being everyone's pack mule.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“I was born a girl in a world of Branwells, but I shall be more than I am meant.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Am I truly such a villain? Is it really a cage if it’s the size of the world?” “Yes,” said Emily, Charlotte, and Anne together, rather more loudly than any of them expected.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Byron kissed her gloved hand as they stepped lightly round one another. He could dance like rivers could run. No one had ever kissed her hand before. Emily felt like she was going to throw up and like she was flying all at once.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“He’ll never be good if he can’t choose to be nasty. It’s the choice that makes the good.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“A house, a carriage, a balloon, a ship, a racing stallionocerosupine! Is that a thing? It sounds like it ought to be, so let’s say it is!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“Bran felt terribly sorry for his sisters, but it was hardly his fault that the world was so determined to make girls suffer a great deal more than boys. He hadn’t built the world. It had nothing to do with him.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“He would say it all, except for the wishing she was a boy part, without crying or wobbling. The girls would look at him with such powerful love and gratitude that he would turn into a different person, a better person, the perfect person. All he needed was that one look and he could live forever.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game

“You can't blame a book for its story.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Glass Town Game