Top 200 Katherine Arden Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “Mornings are wiser than evenings.”

— Katherine Arden

152. “Wiser and greater men than you have tried outsmarting me, as you put it. They are dead now.” “Well,” said Coco very coldly, “that’s too bad for them. But I’m a girl, and I bet I can beat you at chess.”

— Katherine Arden

153. “The men went into the barley fields at daybreak. All morning, they scythed the rippling grass with great howling strokes, and then they spread the stalks to dry. Their rakes went to and fro with a monstrous hiss. The sun was a live thing, throwing its hot arms over their necks. Their feeble shadows hid at their feet, their faces glowed with sweat and sunburn.”

— Katherine Arden

154. “Zimnyaya Koroleva, they said. The winter-queen. It frightened her.”

— Katherine Arden

155. “The Bear is awake.” “What bear?” “The shadow on the wall,” said the rusalka, breathing quickly. “The voice in the dark.” Her face did not move like a human face, but the pupils of her eyes swelled black. “Beware the dead. You must heed me, Vasya, for I will not come again. Not as myself. He will call me, and I will answer; he will have my allegiance and I will turn against you. I cannot do otherwise. The leaves are falling. Do not leave the forest.”

— Katherine Arden

156. “Where do I belong? I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. And I have eaten in your house, and nearly died in your arms, and you rode with me tonight and – I hoped you might know.”

— Katherine Arden

157. “I did not know I was lonely, she thought, until I was no longer alone.”

— Katherine Arden

158. “The difference between uncanny happenings of the benevolent and the wicked sort was no thicker than rumor, and Dmitrii knew it.”

— Katherine Arden

159. “If the domovoi wasn’t real, then what about the others? The vodianoy in the river, the twig-man in the trees? The rusalka, the polevik, the dvorovoi?”

— Katherine Arden

160. “What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?” “Dad – ” “Well?” “I don’t know, what?” Her dad grinned. “A comma,” he informed her, “is a pause at the end of a clause.” Ollie saw where this was going. “Dad.” “But a cat,” her dad finished blithely, “has claws at the ends of its paws.”

— Katherine Arden

161. “Did you see the girl, her torn clothes, her hair hanging loose? Oh, yes, I was there that day: the day of the ruin of the Princess of Serpukhov and Aleksandr Peresvet.”

— Katherine Arden

162. “Men do the work of devils, do they not? It has always been so.”

— Katherine Arden

163. “Only boys and fools think men are first in courage.”

— Katherine Arden

164. “At his words, a bolt of longing tore through her, for blue skies and deep snow, for wild places and for silence, for his fire-lit house in the fir-grove, for his hands in the darkness.”

— Katherine Arden

165. “I was born for a cage, after all: convent or house, what else is there?” “You are a woman,” said Konstantin. He was still holding her arm; she stepped back and he let her go. “You will accept it in time,” he said. “You will be happy.”

— Katherine Arden

166. “The serving-women muttered that she could tame animals, dream the future, and summon rain.”

— Katherine Arden

167. “Tell the story of Frost, Dunyashka. Tell us of the frost-demon, the winter-king Karachun.”

— Katherine Arden

168. “Gods? There is but one God now, child, and I am no more than a wind through bare branches.”

— Katherine Arden

169. “She was naked with powerlessness.”

— Katherine Arden

170. “But I cannot believe her mad. Reckless she is, and immodest, and sometimes I fear for her soul. But she is only herself; she is not mad.”

— Katherine Arden

171. “On great days, the women were allowed, veiled, into the dusky streets, to go and worship with their kin.”

— Katherine Arden

172. “Now she understood. Magic makes men mad. They forget what is real because too much is possible.”

— Katherine Arden

173. “Olga smiled a little. Vasya remembered that years before, her sister had been a girl who had dreamed of love and raven-princes. Olga had laid aside the dream, as women must. Perhaps she did not regret it. For the raven-prince was strange and secret; he would draw you out into a dangerous world.”

— Katherine Arden

174. “A demon sat sewing in the corner, and she was the only who saw.”

— Katherine Arden

175. “Are you angry with me, Vasilisa Petrovna?” His voice held only mild surprise, quiet and inevitable: snow falling in a country without spring. “Do you think that there would be no death if I weren’t there to lead people into the dark? I am old, but old as I am, the world was far older before I ever saw my first moonrise.”

— Katherine Arden

176. “A silence. Then he laughed, softly and unwillingly. “Well done, Vasilisa Petrovna. I have never been gainsaid in my own house before.”

— Katherine Arden

177. “Wherever you go in this big, gorgeous, hideous world, there is a ghost story waiting for you.”

— Katherine Arden

178. “The mild sun loved the sweet-smelling earth, and soft rains scattered flowers in the forest.”

— Katherine Arden

179. “And then the night seemed to reach out and catch him up, fold him inside itself, so that there was only the dark where he had been.”

— Katherine Arden

180. “Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than you willed it.”

— Katherine Arden

181. “Zhar Ptitsa,” Vasya said, tasting the words as though she had never sat at Dunya’s feet hearing tales of the firebird.”

— Katherine Arden

182. “Even bad things can lead to good. Maybe in sad times, it helps to think of that.”

— Katherine Arden

183. “Strange man, worn and kind, with his soul honed to steel.”

— Katherine Arden

184. “Brian belatedly realized that if you told a lot of lies, even if it was for a good reason, like trying to keep people safe, it started to get hard to trust that other people were telling the truth.”

— Katherine Arden

185. “Chyerti are, just as men are, just as the earth herself is. Chyerti are sometimes wise and sometimes foolish, sometimes good and sometimes cruel. God rules the next world, but what of this one? Men may seek salvation in heaven and also make offerings to their hearth-spirits, to keep their house safe from evil. Did not God make chyerti, as He made everything else in heaven and earth?”

— Katherine Arden

186. “My cause is defeated if I am not leader of this host,” said Dmitrii. “For Rus’ will fracture, if I am not lord. They will be as leaves in defeat, scattering in a strong wind, or they will be overproud in victory, each trying to claim a greater share than the others. No, I will play for the great prize. What else is there?”

— Katherine Arden

187. “If you want something, it means you do not have it, it means that you do not believe it is there, which means it will never be there.”

— Katherine Arden

188. “I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed to me.”

— Katherine Arden

189. “I don’t know,” said Vasya with grim honesty.”

— Katherine Arden

190. “Though a savage. She needs a husband; it would steady her.” But as he spoke, an image came to him of his wild girl wedded and bedded, sweating over an oven. The image filled him with a strange regret, and he shook it away.”

— Katherine Arden

191. “When I walked freely among men, the living would scream at me,” Morozko replied evenly. “They would seize my hand, the mane of my horse. The mothers begged me to take them, when I took up their children.”

— Katherine Arden

192. “Dunya had mourned her passing long before they put her in the ground.”

— Katherine Arden

193. “The moon was little thicker than a crescent, the light a glitter of blue.”

— Katherine Arden

194. “I must be old, Pyotr thought to himself, if my son is being kind to me.”

— Katherine Arden

195. “She was young; her blood ran hot.”

— Katherine Arden

196. “In this great camp, face sticky with blood, magic seemed as distant as the uncaring stars.”

— Katherine Arden

197. “And the faces – so many faces, and not one she knew. The novelty dizzied her. Pies and porridge, cloth and leathers, beggars and prelates and artisans’ wives passed under her delighted gaze. This, she thought, is what it means to be a traveler.”

— Katherine Arden

198. “Once in the chaos, he could have sworn he saw a tall white horse beside the bay stallion, whose rider kept the bandits’ blades from finding the girl. But then Sasha realized it was only a cloud of flying snow.”

— Katherine Arden

199. “She bolted and let the cool wind wash the taste of fear from her mouth.”

— Katherine Arden

200. “Why borrow trouble?”

— Katherine Arden