Scan barcode
A review by awilderm23
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
5.0
'After that, Marya Morevna understood that she belonged to her secret and it belonged to her. They had struck a bloody bargain between them. Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you.'
'But if I may teach you anything, it will be to relish everything, to devour it all - the richest things first, for they are your due.'
'This is a very marvelous thing. A winter thing, when everything is pickled and preserved under glass. You can taste summer in this mixture, summer boiled down and soaked in brine, mummified, packed with spices to be born again on this table, in this place, in this snow.'
'Oh, I will be cruel to you... It will stop your breath how cruel I can be. But you understand, don't you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you, when you are sick, I will tend you. I crawl at your feet, before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.'
'Punishment does not mean you aren't loved. On the contrary. You can really only punish someone you love.'
'Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until the snow melts beneath us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase. Only leave me my death - let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret - and I will serve you a meal of myself, served on a platter of all the world's bounty.'
'It was a bad habit, crossing yourself, but like biting fingernails, hard to break.'
'Ivan did not believe in God. Not really, the way that he believed in breakfast, in butter, in cigarettes.'
'In fact, Marya did not feel much of anything besides want, and endless want that coiled in her... That want survived any fight, with her fists, with her guns. It was a wolf, tenacious... She could not remember, now, ever, having felt happy or sad. Only hungry. Only empty, and greedy, and insatiable.'
'And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.'
'You will live as you live in any world, with difficulty and grief.'
'When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up.'
'You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.'
'But if I may teach you anything, it will be to relish everything, to devour it all - the richest things first, for they are your due.'
'This is a very marvelous thing. A winter thing, when everything is pickled and preserved under glass. You can taste summer in this mixture, summer boiled down and soaked in brine, mummified, packed with spices to be born again on this table, in this place, in this snow.'
'Oh, I will be cruel to you... It will stop your breath how cruel I can be. But you understand, don't you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you, when you are sick, I will tend you. I crawl at your feet, before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.'
'Punishment does not mean you aren't loved. On the contrary. You can really only punish someone you love.'
'Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until the snow melts beneath us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase. Only leave me my death - let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret - and I will serve you a meal of myself, served on a platter of all the world's bounty.'
'It was a bad habit, crossing yourself, but like biting fingernails, hard to break.'
'Ivan did not believe in God. Not really, the way that he believed in breakfast, in butter, in cigarettes.'
'In fact, Marya did not feel much of anything besides want, and endless want that coiled in her... That want survived any fight, with her fists, with her guns. It was a wolf, tenacious... She could not remember, now, ever, having felt happy or sad. Only hungry. Only empty, and greedy, and insatiable.'
'And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.'
'You will live as you live in any world, with difficulty and grief.'
'When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up.'
'You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.'