Deathless Quotes

“We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive. This is Russia and it is 1952. What else would you call hell?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive. This is Russia and it is 1952. What else would you call hell?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his poket and he knows your name, Marya Morevna.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“There, weeping, a tsarevna lies locked in a cell.
And Master Grey Wolf serves her very well.
There, in her mortar, sweeping beneath the skies,
the demon Baba Yaga flies.
There Tsar Koschei,
he wastes away,
poring over his pale gold.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I look at you, Masha, and it is like drinking cold water. I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Did I not come to you on my knees with a kingdom in my hand?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies - and those bodies were so dear to me!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You will live as you live in any world...With difficulty, and grief.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“It's not so bad, my darling. Being dead. It's like being alive, only colder.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I will age for you, if it pleases you. I will match you, wrinkle for wrinkle, grey hair for grey hair, crease for crease, wrinkle for wrinkle. You will be so beautiful when you are old.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up." "Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Death hath no dominion.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Oh, but Masha, can’t you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Of late, she had felt coldness in herself, and though she feared it, she loved it too, for it made her strong.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard—thump, bash!—onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The war is always going badly.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until snow melts between us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless