Madaleine

“Men, they feel nothing like what we must endure. You have to make room in yourself for him, and that is the same in a house as in a body. See that you keep some rooms in yourself, locked up tight.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The old order, it is good for the old. A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless