The keeping of lists was for November an exercise kin to repeating of a rosary. She considered it neither obsessive nor compulsive, but a ritual, an essential ordering of the world into tall, thin jars containing perfect nouns. Enough nouns connected one to the other create a verb, and verbs had created everything, had skittered across the face of the void like pebbles across a frozen pond. She had not created a verb herself, but the cherry-wood cabinet in the hall contained book after book, jar after jar, vessel upon vessel, all brown as branches, and she had faith. . 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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