Top 200 Katherine Arden Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “It was so much easier to hate a man than a system: vast, inhuman, bloodstained.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

203. “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

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

— Katherine Arden

205. “Children cannot eat vengeance, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

— Katherine Arden

206. “Why borrow trouble?”

— Katherine Arden

207. “Endings – they are beginnings too.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

209. “His voice was steady against her ear. She felt the years in him, and the strength. “All will be well.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

211. “Magic’s just science we don’t understand.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

213. “She ceased screaming and throve on the milk of peasant women.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

216. “Freddie didn’t miss the sun. He kept to the shadows and drank and watched Faland’s mirror, lost in longing. It was an endless, daydreamer’s longing, satisfying in itself, with no need for fulfilment. The people in the mirror could not disappoint in any way, and he would never fail them, or lose them, or mourn them. It was easier so. He had only to watch and yearn. And tell Faland a story.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

218. “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

219. “The wicked can still mourn, Vasya.”

— Katherine Arden

220. “They are fighting their war in the last world, but we’re dying in this one.”

— Katherine Arden

221. “Polunochnitsa,” she said, drinking. Vasya jerked back in alarm. Solovey, watching, pinned his ears. Vasya’s nurse, Dunya, had told tales of two demon-sisters, Midnight and Midday, and none of those stories ended well for lonely travelers. “Why are you here?” Vasya asked, breathing fast.”

— Katherine Arden

222. “He knew what evil lay upon this land. It was in the sun-symbols on the nurse’s apron, in that stupid woman’s terror, in the fey, feral eyes of Pyotr’s elder daughter. The place was infested with demons: the chyerti of the old religion. These foolish, wild people worshipped God by day and the old gods in secret; they tried to walk both paths at once and made themselves base in the sight of the Father. No wonder evil had come to work its mischief.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

224. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She forced her voice to calm. “No,” he said. “Some things I can heal. But I cannot heal gently.”

— Katherine Arden

225. “The first stars had kindled in a sky gone royally violet, and the moon heaved a faint silver curve over the ragged line of palaces.”

— Katherine Arden

226. “Do not go, Vasya,” he said. “When you stay, I remember my strength, and I remember that I am not afraid.”

— Katherine Arden

227. “Or must she just spend her life kneeling at the altar of her ghosts?”

— Katherine Arden

228. “But do not take Anna Ivanovna to heart; she does not want you to be beautiful.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

230. “It is easy to die,′ replied the bannik. ‘Harder to live. Do not forget me Vasilisa Petrovna.”

— Katherine Arden

231. “Men make themselves afraid,” the Bear told her, smiling. “Imagining is worse than anything they actually see.”

— Katherine Arden

232. “Dunya’s voice creaked like a calling raven, for she remembered, to her grief, the girl who had come to Ivan Kalita’s halls, lost and frail and achingly beautiful, trailing miracles behind her.”

— Katherine Arden

233. “Her hair smelled of earth and sun and lake-water.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

235. “Ghosts have warm hands, he kept telling me, as though it were the greatest secret in the world.”

— Katherine Arden

236. “Vasya saw, with disquiet, that Midnight had a great number of teeth.”

— Katherine Arden

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

— Katherine Arden

238. “Have you anything to offer her? Olga asked him. And, with an edge, “Besides whispers in the dark?”

— Katherine Arden

239. “In Moscow, priests are in love with their standing. They eat fat meat and preach poverty to the miserable.”

— Katherine Arden