Deathless Quotes

“It is not possible to posses so many colors and a hard heart.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Family is a thorny, vicious business”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“he did love her, even if it was beef-love: stupid and tough and overcooked.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Let it be over”, she pleaded within herself. “Let it never have happened—any of it. Let me be young again, and the story just starting.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You carry your death in every cell of you. Every tiny mote in your body is dying, faster than sleight of hand. You are always dying, every second. How could I take that out of you?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Only a fool is so innocent as to think he can measure up to a woman's first love.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I always die at the end," he whispers, and he is afraid now, his hands shaking. "It is always like this. It is never easy".”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Abduction is a marvelous icebreaker.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Death stands behind every bride, every groom.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“She must have cried for some secret amphibian reason. Then her dress caught on fire while they danced, and there was a mess, but that's neither here nor there.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Marya watched from the upper floor as once again the birds gathered in the great oak tree, sniping and snapping for the last autumn nuts, stolen from squirrels and hidden in bark-cracks, which every winged creature knows are the most bitter of all nuts, like old sorrows sitting heavy on the tongue.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Ivan said, If only we could eat violin music.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Firebirds are such frustating quarry. One minute it's all fiery tail feathers and red talons and the next, nothing but ash and a sore seat.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Wouldn't you like to have comrades?' But she would not like that. She wanted only to rest and to read her old, rain-swollen books, turning the pages carefully, so carefully.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“like a man in black, she would find all this so much easier. “Ivan, you do not understand us. A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“But we are going to do an extraordinary thing together. Do you know what it is we are doing? I will tell you, so that later, you cannot say I deceived you. We are taking your will out of your jaw—for that is where the will sits—and pressing it very small between our two hands, like a bit of dough. We are rolling it, and squeezing it, until it gets very small. Small enough to fit into the eye of a needle which is hidden inside of an egg, which is hidden inside a hen, which is hidden inside a goose, which is hidden inside a deer. When we are finished you will give your will to me, and I will keep it safe for you. I am very good at this thing. A savant, you might say.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“They happen because Life consumes everything and Death never sleeps, and between them the world moves. Winter becomes spring. And every once in a while, they act out a strange, sad little pantomime, just to see if anyone has won yet.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“She felt, as she could always feel, the bones of him beneath the skin of his fingers, his hips. Then he hardened, his skin becoming warm and real and full. A skeleton, always, embraced her first, and then remembered to be a man. She understood—had he not told her? To be Deathless is to treat with death in every moment. To stave death is not involuntary, like breathing, but a constant tension, like balancing a glass on the head. And each day the Tsar of Life fought in his own body to keep death down like a chastened dog.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Everything in this place was livid and lurid and living, and when he loved her and hurt her all at once she lived, too, higher and harder than she had thought she could. Yes, she thought, magic is like that, when it comes.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Equally dead, equally bound. You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Of course, rich men have been made obsolete by the Party, but if you learn a second thing from me tonight, let it be this: 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

“Your bones are so stubborn! It's almost as though you don't want to shrink at all! Brazen thing, why do you want to be so tall?"
"I should never reach the top bookshelf otherwise”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Doesn’t mean we don’t know what stories are. Doesn’t mean we don’t walk in them, every second. 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.” Baba Yaga pressed the back of her withered hand to Marya’s cheek. “That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Death stands behind every bride, every groom. Even as they say their vows, the flowers are rotting in her crown, his teeth are rotting in his head. Cancers they will not notice for thirty years grow slowly, already, in their stomachs. Her beauty browns at the edges as the ring slides up her finger. His strength saps, infinitesimally, as he kisses her. If you listen in the church, you can hear my clock tick softly, as they tock together toward the grave. I hold their hands as they stride proudly down the very short road to dotage and death. It’s all so sweet, it makes me cry. Let me kiss your bride on both cheeks, Life. Let me feel her hot blood slowly cool against my eyelids.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“For this is the constant sorrow of the dead, that though they drink and eat and dream much as they did before, they know they are dead, and yearn desperately to live again, to feel blood inside them once more, to remember who they were. For the memory of the dead is short, and thought by thought they lose all sense of their former lives until they drift from place to place as shades, their eyes hollow. After a time, they believe they are alive again.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“His fear made her stronger; she could be brave for both of them.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You took my will."
"So all seductions go. One will presented to another, wrapped in a bow. The question is always who is to take and who is to give.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I will tell you how we made soup in those days: Hold a ration card over a pot of boiling water for thirty minutes, so that the shadow of the card falls on the broth. Then eat it up, and don't you dare spill a drop.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless