Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

And then she’d take off again, with a sort of confused-confounded glance down at me, as though every time she came home, it was a shock to remember that I’d ever been born.

Though any species on any dumb gobworld may develop sentience (the poor bastards), no government ever does.

We have always believed that one of the hallmarks of sentience is the ability to look down upon others. It separates us from the lichen.

They are time, and time eats everything but listens to no one.

“And how does that make you feel?” he crooned in the comforting tone of a therapist who may or may not actually care.

My percussionist thinks you have a touch of Metastasized Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Blek. My diagnosis? You’re an asshole. Sadly, the only known cure is being set on fire and dropped off a balcony.

And then another song began, better than that one. Each song was so impossible, so perfect, so complex, so anatomically baffling, and they only grew more heartbreaking and piercing, the special effects more dazzling, the fire in the ice and the psychic manipulation of the audience, that both of them sobbed and sobbed as if they had lost every last thing in the world. Hours passed.
The humans watched in an agony of feeling, in a rictus of involuntary ecstasy and horror and grief and artistic nirvana, their bodies shuddering, their brains a sea of flaming blue emotion.
The cat watched with semi-mild interest. It was all right, she supposed, if you were into that sort of thing.

A cow goes moo; a sheep goes baa; a celebrity correspondent goes who are you wearing?

Oh, certainly it had been alarming at first. But adjusting to certain changes in your circumstances was easy when you didn’t really care about anything. As far as she was concerned, she’d always talked. By some miracle, everyone else had recently achieved the ability to listen properly. She was over the novelty within half an hour. No one listened to her or asked for her input or attended gratefully to her needs any more than they ever had. They were too busy making big monkey fusses over their big monkey problems.

Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between the stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all. Well, it isn’t, really, it isn’t at all, and believing and achieving is just something sportscasters say, but what are you gonna do, not die? Try it. I’ll wait.

I don’t know why you would even bring up the Internet. The xeno-intelligence officer responsible for evaluating your digital communication required invasive emergency therapy after an hour’s exposure. One glance at that thing is the strongest argument possible against the sentience of humanity. I wouldn’t draw attention to it, if I were you.

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything pulses to a beat laid down by the Big Bang. Everything feels the drumline of creation from star to sex to song.

What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your health at two in the afternoon.

Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it’s monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?
Do you have soul?

Everybody fucks.…Being ashamed of it makes about as much sense as being ashamed of the speed of light.