Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders - but they must be trained. Beatrice could have told her all about it. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarm, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given? . Catherynne M. Valente
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More Quotes By Catherynne M. Valente
  1. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just...
  2. War is not for winning, Masha, " sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.
  3. Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
  4. This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
  5. However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely.
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