Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

There are many things that I don't understand.

I have no idea,' he tells her, and there is such a spark in his eye when he says it, she can tell having no idea is exactly the way he wants it.

By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.

Confusion is not an ignoble condition

The more you play it the less you know about it.

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.

What's going on?" Newt asked, looking back and forth between Thomas and Aris. "Why're you guys looking at each other like you just fell in love?

[William Butler] Yeats has the phrase Hodos Chameliontos, chameleon-like, in that you don't know where the beginning or the middle or the end is, so it's an unrelieved hallucination, because you don't know where you're coming in and you don't know where you're going out. It ends, you're going into the hallucination, or maybe coming out of it, I don't know.

The more I see, the less I know.

No one knows what to do with you, girlie.

A sage steers by the bright light of confusion and doubt.

Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never see you up so close before, and I do not understand you at all. You say sometimes I act like I don't see you? I don't even know where to look! Living with you around is like is like living with a permanent dazzle. The fact that you even like me, or look at me, or brush by me, or hug me, or hold me, is so surprising that after it's over I have to go back through it a dozen times in my head to savor it and try and figure out what it was like because I was too busy being astounded while it was happening.

Everyone is as confused as I am.

You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.

I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it.

Vladimir: I don't understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.

If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me.

I looked at Micah, who shrugged. I looked at Rafael, who shook his head. Nice that none of us knew why he was undressing.

We live in a bewildering world.

I've never really known what glamour is.

I am really puzzled to understand myself.

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.