1. Santa Claus is real. However, your parents are folkloric constructs meant to protect and fortify children against the darkness of the real world. They are symbols representing the return of the sun and the end of winter, the sacrifice of the king and the eternal fecundity of the queen. They wear traditional vestments and are associated with certain seasonal plants, animals, and foods. After a certain age, no intelligent child continues believing in their parents, and it is embarrassing when one professes such faith after puberty. Santa Claus, however, will never fail us.

— Catherynne M. Valente

8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for Christmas: that the ice should come back

— Catherynne M. Valente

A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic.

— Catherynne M. Valente

A body can only deliver up the truth its bones know, Its blood, which is its history.

— Catherynne M. Valente

A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

— Catherynne M. Valente

A dragon looks like a girl when it is young.

— Catherynne M. Valente

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physics, which you’ll learn all about when you’re older and don’t care anymore.

— Catherynne M. Valente

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 alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay

— Catherynne M. Valente

Al is the upside down man. Back home, you work all day and night to learn how to paint, learn linseed and cadmium and badger-hair and perspective, which is just math in art-school drag, you know? And maybe you still can't do anything worth phoning the Met over. But hey, getting a boy to fuck you is just the easiest thing since Sunday naps. Up top, getting drunk at a party is what you do when you're all out of art. But in... Canada? Are we calling it Canada now? Ok! Al's the King of Canada and he says: fuck that for a lark! The world feels like being a bastard-and-a-half this decade, let's play nine-pins on its grave. Down here it's all the same! Kiss a boy and books come out! Ralph up Parthenon's into the upstairs toilet! Dance poems, shit show tunes! Art is easy! Pick up genius at the corner shop! Sell your soul and half your shoes for a glass of gin!' He looks up at Zelda Fair and his poor goblin face goes all twisted up and desperate. 'It's all fucked anyway, you see? The end of the world already happened. It's happening all the time. It's going to happen again. And again after that. Just when you think it's done falling on its face, the world picks itself up and throws itself off a roof. Boom. Pavement. The world's ending forever and ever, and we're not even allowed to toast at her funeral. So we have to do something else, or she won't know we ever loved her.

— Catherynne M. Valente

All children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes.

— Catherynne M. Valente