Literary Birthday – 5 May – Catherynne M. Valente

Happy Birthday, Catherynne M. Valente, born 5 May 1979.

Seven Quotes

  1. She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.
  2. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.
  3. It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
  4. A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.
  5. Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
  6. Monsters almost always are culture’s way of working out their fears and are thus inherently incredibly interesting and powerful.
  7. No matter what you write, you actually can’t help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.

Catherynne M. Valente is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. She is the author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, and The Boy Who Lost Fairyland.

Source for Image of author

by Amanda Patterson

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Posted on: 5th May 2015
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