Top 200 Katherine Arden Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Katherine Arden

152. “Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

154. “But I think you should be careful... that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing.”

— Katherine Arden

155. “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

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. “She was naked with powerlessness.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

161. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

163. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

169. “But at nightfall the air quieted, and the sky filled with the promise of snow.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

172. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

175. “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

176. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

178. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

180. “But now those childish dreams dwindled to this: an aging woman, magnificent and solitary, whose tower door never opened, who would make her daughter a proper maiden but never count the cost.”

— Katherine Arden

181. “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

182. “Best not be grateful for the grass until you’ve eaten it, the mare said with a snort.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

184. “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

185. “Some things I can heal. But I cannot heal gently.”

— Katherine Arden

186. “The two worked in silence for a time, but it was an easy silence. Peace lay thick on that place.”

— Katherine Arden

187. “And yet, I will think of the future,” Vasya retorted. “To remind me that the present is not forever.”

— Katherine Arden

188. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

191. “She has had any number of foals. I yield to her judgement.”

— Katherine Arden

192. “The generals fought among themselves. Such times always bred masterless men, and everyone within the Horde’s reach suffered.”

— Katherine Arden

193. “When you stay, I remember my strength, and I remember that I am not afraid.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

197. “But caution won. “I have learned the cost of being reckless,” she told Ded Grib.”

— Katherine Arden

198. “Men lived too near the bone in winter to bother with things that did not concern them.”

— Katherine Arden

199. “Chyerti are formed of the currents of human life; they ride them, but they do not interfere.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden