The Refrigerator Monologues Quotes

“I belong in the refrigerator. Because the truth is, I'm just food for a superhero. He'll eat up my death and get the energy he needs to become a legend.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“When you don’t need anything anymore, the only thing you need is stories, and songs, and beauty, and spectacle. That’s the good stuff. The stuff that reminds us who we are.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“What’s the difference between being dead and having a boyfriend? Death sticks around.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Bad things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to okay people. Bad things happen to everyone.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Becoming a porn star is pretty much exactly like becoming a superhero. One day, an intrepid, fresh-faced young woman discovers that she has a talent. She chooses a new name – something over the top, flamboyant, a little arrogant, with a tinge of the epic. Somebody makes her a costume – skintight – revealing, a flattering color, nothing much left to the imagination. She explores her power, learns a specialty move or two, sweats her way through a training montage, throwing out punny quips here, there, and everywhere. She inhabits an archetype. She takes every blow that comes her way like she doesn’t even feel it. Then she goes out into the big, bad night and saves people from loneliness. From the assorted villanies that plague the common man. From despair and bad dreams. From tedium. Oh, sure, her victories are short-lived. She finishes off her foes in one glorious masterstroke, but the minute she’s gone, all the wickedness and darkness of the scheming, teeming world comes rushing back in. But when you need her, here she comes to save the day, doing it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Falling in love is embarrassing. It is not hardcore. It is not part of the scene.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Never give up your voice for a man, you fucking guppy.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“People who share a secret share a heart.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Just slip on something black and low-cut, carve yourself the biggest goddamn slice of whatever cake they said you couldn't have, and be a VILLAIN for a night! Come on. You know they deserve it. You know they ALL deserve it. What's the use of all that rage you got if you don't take it out for spin?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I was better than a punk. I was a protaganist.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“It’s a funny thing. You go your whole life thinking you’re the protagonist, but really, you’re just backstory.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I was used and tricked and thrown away, but I cannot be forgiven. It’s a funny thing. You go your whole life thinking you’re the protagonist, but really, you’re just the backstory. The boys shrug and go on, they fight and blow things up and half of them do much worse... and still get a key to the city, and eventually you’re just a story your high school boyfriend tells the kid he had with his new wife.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I’m not goddamned mermaid either, so don’t get any ideas about shell-bras or selling my voice to a sea-witch. That little idiot deserved to die. Never give up your voice for a man, you fucking guppy.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Heroes in motion tend to stay in motion, but villains in motion tend toward mass destruction.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“What matters is entertainment. Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit. The dead fear boredom the way mortals fear death.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Eternity takes forever.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Eternity takes forever. The infinite expanse of time just does not know when to quit.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Human contact is a terrible drug. Sometimes, you’ll even take the hit you know is tainted. You can’t stop yourself. The need is too strong.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“The thing I hate about being dead is you can’t move on. I was in love with him when I died, so I’ll be in love with him till the sun burns out.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“They start setting up on a little left stage playing my secret favorite song: the rustling of sheet music and set lists, the coughing and quiet warm-up, the tuning of instruments, squeak of speakers and amps, the last rags on cigarettes and popping of knuckles.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“This refrigerator. Oh. I guess that’s what the New School kids call foreshadowing. Wow, it’s fucking easy to miss in real life!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I’ve been thinking a lot about rules lately. About karma, I guess, even though most people just viciously abuse that word. They don’t give one spangly fuck about the wheel of becoming and unbecoming. They just want to rub themselves raw against the idea that bad things only happen to bad people. Samsara is just something they name their cat.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I’ve been thinking a lot about rules lately. About karma, I guess, even though most people just viciously abuse that word. They don’t give one spangly fuck about the wheel of becoming and unbecoming.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“I belong in the refrigerator. Because the truth is, I’m just food for a superhero. He’ll eat up my death and get the energy he needs to become a legend.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“He looked so sorry and miserable as he pushed me out the door. It stung. It always stings when there's this whole story going on and you're really just a B-plot walk-on who only got a look at three pages of the script.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Luck is a finite and rare substance in the universe, like palladium or cobalt. To use it, you have to take it from somebody else.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“But the longer I’m dead, the more I think the universe is a big blackboard with rules scrawled all over it in chalk and stardust and it’s just that the damn thing is flipped over and turned away from us so we can’t see anything but the erase, which death, hitting the floor.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Rich girls aren’t criminals, don’t you know? They’re just troubled, poor things.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“And that’s how you begin to win over a child. People who share a secret share a heart.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues

“Origin stories are like birthday parties: very exciting and colorful and noisy; but in the end, they’re all the same. Anticipation sizzles around for weeks before the Big Day, but when it comes, your shindig looks pretty much like the little one Peter had last month. That’s an order of operations: take off your coats, pin the tail on the donkey, infection, singing, cake, mutation, balloon, gifts, branding, maybe a magician or a clown, exhaustion, and a bag of toys to take home. You’re the same person today as yesterday. You just got a really big present and a shiny new hat to wear.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues