Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

I wondered what it was like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in the darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us.

For the first time, I saw what was in his heart, and I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see mine.

I know you even under the skin.

When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

I think invariably when you are dealing with relationships, the films really center on that, and the plot is really born out of that. That's the most core part of a relationship: intimacy, I think, whether it's expressed or not.

I mean, I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone, you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out, I won't be able to get to know someone another way.

I am oftentimes the ear for some people that I know and love. Which I like being. I don't know if I'd like being a marriage counselor, though, because that's too deep for me.

Conflict is easy because we've all had conflict, but to really bond with someone and to have a genuine connection, it needs to come from a place by knowing them.

The more specific you are about a very general feeling of loneliness is actually how you connect with people.

I think that people relate on matters of the heart.

The eyes are so telling. That's how you engage with people and bond with them. I love direct, strong eye contact.

I've always felt like I had a personal relationship with fans. I'm not afraid to be emotional or vulnerable or humble.

Here's the thing: You rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you.

There's something so beautiful in coming on one's very inmost thoughts in another. In one way it is one of the greatest pleasures one has.

I'm a person who doesn't necessarily enjoy feeling vulnerable, so I think my loved ones and my family make me feel vulnerable. Also, being connected with people when I'm working is a very vulnerable place to be.

Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality

He put his cold hands on either side of my face and fixed his golden eyes on mine. "Would you please tell me what you're thinking? Before I go mad?

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

You really know a person when you sleep so near to them, or when you eat with them.

When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.

I love being free enough that I can be so intimate with people, and that people are free enough that we can all be intimate with each other!

Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching – a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless. And in the almostness of the moment, I cared at least enough. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try to find out. Her on my bed, wide green eyes staring down at me. The enduring mystery of her sly, almost smirking, smile. Five layers between us.

I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.