Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

I think you are born, and I think you die. I have a pragmatic nature, but I yearn to believe.

We do not live by justice, but by grace.

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

The person who is worthiest to live, is fittest to die.

There is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration.

Every man that ever lived craved perfect happiness, the detective poignantly reflected. But how can we have it when we know we’re going to die? Each joy was clouded by the knowledge it would end. And so nature had implanted in us a desire for something unattainable? No. It couldn’t be. It makes no sense. Every other striving implanted by nature had a corresponding object that wasn’t a phantom. Why this exception? the detective reasoned. It was nature making hunger when there wasn’t any food. We continue. We go on. Thus death proved life.

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teachh us vice.

Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

Man is born for uprightness. If a man lose his uprightness and yet live, his escape from death is mere good fortune.

Death is very likely the single best invention of life.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living.

Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite.

I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset cos' they act like people", said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.

But who is innocent? By grace divine, Not otherwise,O Nature! we are thine.

If you scratch some saints you will find the devil.

People--stupid when they lived; potentially stupid when they died.