“Wouldn't you like to have comrades?' But she would not like that. She wanted only to rest and to read her old, rain-swollen books, turning the pages carefully, so carefully.”
Work
<p>Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.</p><p><i>Deathless</i>, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, <i>Deathless </i>is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.</p>
Quotes
Showing 1-8 of 8
Catherynne M. Valente
Canonical work source
“Wouldn't you like to have comrades?' But she would not like that. She wanted only to rest and to read her old, rain-swollen books, turning the pages carefully, so carefully.”
“First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.”
“Men die. It's practically what they're for.”
“I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side i...”
“Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.”
“The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupul...”
“Time is communal, Marya Morevna, the most purely communal of all commodities. It belongs to us all equally.”
“And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.”