Top 200 Katherine Arden Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “In winter it is impossible to be still. Even sitting by the fire, one is watching the coals, stirring the soup, fighting – always fighting – the eager frost.”

— Katherine Arden

52. “She hated him. She dreamed about him. None of it mattered. Might as well hate the sky – or desire it – and she hated that worst of all.”

— Katherine Arden

53. “The flagon indeed contained mead: thin and strong and somehow piercing, like winter sunshine.”

— Katherine Arden

54. “Nay, it is the coming storm. The first sign is fear. The second is always fire. Your people are afraid, and now the fires burn.”

— Katherine Arden

55. “Sasha looked at his sister. He had never thought of her as girlish, but the last trace of softness was gone. The quick brain, the strong limbs were there: fiercely, almost defiantly present, though concealed beneath her encumbering dress. She was more feminine than she had ever been, and less. Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.”

— Katherine Arden

56. “It is a cruel task, to frighten people in God’s name.”

— Katherine Arden

57. “The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” snapped the domovaya.”

— Katherine Arden

58. “You might get to know characters in books, Ollie thought, but getting to know a human was an entirely different thing.”

— Katherine Arden

59. “Will you tell her? asked the mare. “Everything?” the demon said. “Of bears and sorcerers, spells made of sapphire and a witch that lost her daughter? No, of course not. I shall tell her as little as possible. And hope that it is enough.”

— Katherine Arden

60. “It will be dark in a few hours. Ghosts are stronger in the dark.”

— Katherine Arden

61. “Stallions obey mares.”

— Katherine Arden

62. “Solovey will take me to the ends of the earth if I ask it. I am going into the world, Alyosha. I will be no one’s bride, neither of man nor of God. I am going to Kiev and Sarai and Tsargrad, and I will look upon the sun on the sea.”

— Katherine Arden

63. “Konstantin had never seen Vasya so. In the house, she was grave and wary, careless and charming by turn, all eyes and bones and soundless feet. But alone, under the sky, she was beautiful as a yearling filly, or a new-flown hawk.”

— Katherine Arden

64. “Cabbage, Konstantin noted with disgust. He was mortally weary of cabbage.”

— Katherine Arden

65. “The more one knows, the sooner one grows old.”

— Katherine Arden

66. “If you spend all your days bearing the burden of unforgotten wrongs you will only wound yourself.”

— Katherine Arden

67. “How? I am a demon and a nightmare; I die every spring, and I will live forever.”

— Katherine Arden

68. “The breath hitched in his throat. His hand caught hers, but he did not untangle her fingers. “Why are you here?” she asked him. For a moment she thought he would not answer, then he said, as though reluctant, “I heard you cry.”

— Katherine Arden

69. “You are immortal, and perhaps I seem small to you,” she said at last fiercely. “But my life is not your game.”

— Katherine Arden

70. “It held clothing: a wolfskin cloak. Vasya stared down at these things with a delight she had never felt for the gold or gems of her dowry. They belonged to someone else, someone more capable and strange.”

— Katherine Arden

71. “I want freedom,” she said at the length, almost to herself. “But I also want a place and a purpose. I am not sure I can have either, let alone both. And I do not want to live a lie.”

— Katherine Arden

72. “Girls were happy to be married. Olga had glowed when her husband put a jewel on her finger and took her away. Maybe Vasya was jealous of her elder sister. But this daughter would never find a husband in Moscow. Might as well put a hawk in a dovecote.”

— Katherine Arden

73. “It is going to end, Vasya thought. One day. This world of wonders, where steam in a bathhouse can be a creature that speaks prophecy. One day, there will be only bells and processions. The chyerti will be fog and memory and stirrings in the summer barley.”

— Katherine Arden

74. “And yet, I will think of the future,” Vasya retorted. “To remind me that the present is not forever. One day I may see my brother Alyosha again, and my sister Irina. I might have a home of my own, a place and a purpose, a victory. What is the present without the future?”

— Katherine Arden

75. “You left me this mad girl, and I love her well. She is braver and wilder than any of my sons.”

— Katherine Arden

76. “She looked like a wild thing new-caught and just barely groomed into submission.”

— Katherine Arden

77. “Blood is one thing. The sight is another. But courage – that is rarest of all, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

— Katherine Arden

78. “Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit? I find it fitting.”

— Katherine Arden

79. “He is full of desire. Desire and fear. He does not know what he desires, and he does not admit his fear. But he feels both, strong enough to strangle.”

— Katherine Arden

80. “There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not.”

— Katherine Arden

81. “Moscow, just past midwinter, and the haze of ten thousand fires rose to meet a smothering sky. To the west a little light lingered, but in the east the clouds mounded up, bruise-colored in the livid dusk, buckling with unfallen snow.”

— Katherine Arden

82. “The sea is fair in the storm-shadow The sky wondrous without its blue But trust me; on the rock, the girl Excels the wave, the sky, and the storm – A. S. PUSHKIN.”

— Katherine Arden

83. “You shouldn’t have told them I was a girl. Then they might have believed that I was dangerous.”

— Katherine Arden

84. “You cannot take vengeance on a whole people because of the doings of a few wicked men.”

— Katherine Arden

85. “I will be no one’s bride, neither of man nor of God.”

— Katherine Arden

86. “If I wanted to imprison someone until the end of days, would it not be best to use a prison that he has no desire to escape?”

— Katherine Arden

87. “But the rip in her blouse was large, her hunger vast, and her patience negligible even under better circumstances.”

— Katherine Arden

88. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet – ” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”

— Katherine Arden

89. “Am I a child? Always someone else must decide for me. But this I will decide for myself.”

— Katherine Arden

90. “I remember more and see more than you, she said. And will for a considerable time. We do not speak to many, and the spirit of horses does not reveal himself to anyone. There is magic in your bones. You must reckon with it.”

— Katherine Arden

91. “She is herself,” said Sasha. “Doom and blessing both, and it is for God to judge her.”

— Katherine Arden

92. “Get back!” Vasya said to Sasha. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed pale hair, Midnight’s set, triumphant face. She thought she heard a whisper: “Learn or die, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

— Katherine Arden

93. “Above all, Vasya wanted her horse. She wanted his strength, his warm breath, his uncomplicated affection. Without him, she was a lost girl in a dress; on his back, she felt invincible.”

— Katherine Arden

94. “You will walk a long road,” said Morozko. “If you have not the courage to meet it, better – far better – for you to die quiet in the snow. Perhaps I meant you a kindness.”

— Katherine Arden

95. “If this is the last decision I can ever make, at least it is my decision. Let me go, Alyosha. I am not afraid.”

— Katherine Arden

96. “She had survived the frost and the flame, had found a harbor, however brief. Perhaps that was all anyone could ask, in the world’s savage turning.”

— Katherine Arden

97. “The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” Midnight returned cheerfully.”

— Katherine Arden

98. “You are too attached to things as they are,” said Morozko, combing the mare’s withers. He glanced down idly. “You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose. And then they will.”

— Katherine Arden

99. “Learn?” he said then. Was that bitterness in his voice? “How? I am as I was made: unchanging. Long ago, men dreamed a sword into my hand. Gods diminish, but they do not change. Now try again.”

— Katherine Arden

100. “She did not want to see hope in his eyes. She wanted him to be a monster. But monsters were for children.”

— Katherine Arden