Top 200 Katherine Arden Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t panic. That’s the first rule of survival. Never panic.”

— Katherine Arden

2. “But yes,” he said wearily. “As I could, I loved you. Now will you go? Live.” “I, too,” she said. “In a childish way, as girls love heroes that come in the night, I loved you.”

— Katherine Arden

3. “I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing.”

— Katherine Arden

4. “Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya. And both are mine.”

— Katherine Arden

5. “I have been running through the dark, trying to save all who have need of me. I have done good and I have done evil, but I am neither. I am only myself.”

— Katherine Arden

6. “His voice was like snow at midnight.”

— Katherine Arden

7. “You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow.”

— Katherine Arden

8. “In Russian, Frost was called Morozko, the demon of winter. But long ago, the people called him Karachun, the death-god. Under that name, he was king of black midwinter who came for bad children and froze them in the night. It was an ill-omened word, and unlucky to speak it while he still held the land in his grip.”

— Katherine Arden

9. “Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.”

— Katherine Arden

10. “All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”

— Katherine Arden

11. “Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it.”

— Katherine Arden

12. “You’re kind of grumpy most of the time, but when things get bad, you’re the bravest. People can surprise you.”

— Katherine Arden

13. “Wild birds die in cages.”

— Katherine Arden

14. “Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen.”

— Katherine Arden

15. “You are not alone, he said, in a voice no one but she could hear. Remember.”

— Katherine Arden

16. “You know nothing of this world, and now you mean to go out and die in it?”

— Katherine Arden

17. “You cannot love and be immortal.”

— Katherine Arden

18. “I will have my freedom.”

— Katherine Arden

19. “The living need you more than the dead. And they are harder to comfort.”

— Katherine Arden

20. “As I could, I loved you.”

— Katherine Arden

21. “You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose. And then they will.”

— Katherine Arden

22. “East of the sun, west of the moon,” said Morozko. “Beyond the next tree.”

— Katherine Arden

23. “We who live forever can know no courage, nor do we love enough to give our lives.”

— Katherine Arden

24. “The Bear laughed. “As it should be. Because that is the only way you can play for everything, when you do not fear to lose.”

— Katherine Arden

25. “Moscow killed her princes quickly.”

— Katherine Arden

26. “But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”

— Katherine Arden

27. “You are not alone either. By all means, let us continue repeating it until one of us believes it.”

— Katherine Arden

28. “I believe in memory. I believe in remembering someone you love so well that it becomes kind of like a ghost. You remember someone so hard that it feels like they’re in the next room, just around the corner, that they could walk in any minute.”

— Katherine Arden

29. “You can’t hide in your books forever. There are all kinds of people, and good things, and life, just waiting for you.”

— Katherine Arden

30. “That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest – I did not count on that.”

— Katherine Arden

31. “I will see the world beyond this forest, and I will not count the cost.”

— Katherine Arden

32. “Think of me sometimes,” he returned. “When the snowdrops have bloomed and the snow has melted.”

— Katherine Arden

33. “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.”

— Katherine Arden

34. “I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.”

— Katherine Arden

35. “There was a time, not long ago When flowers grew all year When days were long And nights star-strewn And men lived free from fear.”

— Katherine Arden

36. “Perhaps I am not so wise as you would have me, for all my years in this world. I do not know what you should choose. Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.”

— Katherine Arden

37. “Now hear me. Before the end, you will pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die by your own choosing, and weep for a nightingale.”

— Katherine Arden

38. “It is time to put aside dreaming. Fairy tales are sweet on winter nights, nothing more.”

— Katherine Arden

39. “I carve things of wood because things made by effort are more real than things made by wishing.”

— Katherine Arden

40. “There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark. One man’s monster is another man’s beloved. The wise know that.”

— Katherine Arden

41. “Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya,” he murmured over her head. “And both are mine.”

— Katherine Arden

42. “I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.”

— Katherine Arden

43. “The world is wide, and the road will take us anywhere.”

— Katherine Arden

44. “Fear is first, then fire, then famine.”

— Katherine Arden

45. “Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it.”

— Katherine Arden

46. “I go to church, Father,” she replied. “Anna Ivanovna is not my mother, nor is her madness my business. Just as my soul is not yours. And it seems to me we did very well before you came; for if we prayed less, we also wept less.”

— Katherine Arden

47. “I want Dmitrii’s admiration. I want a victory. I even want power, over princes and chyerti. I am allowed to want things, winter-king.”

— Katherine Arden

48. “A woman married. Or she became a nun. Or she died. That was what being a women meant. What then, was she?”

— Katherine Arden

49. “I am a witch,” said Vasya. Blood was running down her hand now, spoiling her grip. “I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.”

— Katherine Arden

50. “I shall tell the story of Morozko, of his kindness and his cruelty.”

— Katherine Arden