Top 200 Kristin Cashore Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.”

— Kristin Cashore

2. “Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too horrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done. I forgive myself, thought Fire. Today, I forgive myself.”

— Kristin Cashore

3. “Gratitude takes less energy than anger.”

— Kristin Cashore

4. “Your horse is named Small. Yes. Mine is named Big. -Fire and Brigan.”

— Kristin Cashore

5. “When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?”

— Kristin Cashore

6. “The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you.”

— Kristin Cashore

7. “The more I see and hear, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

— Kristin Cashore

8. “Do you understand? I don’t want you to do a thing if you don’t understand it.”

— Kristin Cashore

9. “I don’t often know who should read what book. It’s a little bit like trying to set people up on a date – a good match is unpredictable and mysterious.”

— Kristin Cashore

10. “He considered her seriously. “Well. And that’s easy,” he said. “My Grace will protect me from him, And I’ll protect you. You’ll be safe with me, Katsa.”

— Kristin Cashore

11. “I barely even existed half the time. I couldn’t even touch someone unless I turned myself into a thing first, an empty thing.”

— Kristin Cashore

12. “Bacon improved things dramatically.”

— Kristin Cashore

13. “It was a hurting tune, resigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire’s fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind to say goodbye.”

— Kristin Cashore

14. “You’re the queen, and it’s the queen’s house, and whatever Brigan may accomplish, he’s highly unlikely ever to be queen.”

— Kristin Cashore

15. “While I was looking the other way your fire went out Left me with cinders to kick into dust What a waste of the wonder you were In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine At the disgrace of a waste of a life.”

— Kristin Cashore

16. “Part of avoiding thoughts about something was not encouraging opportunities for that something to makes itself felt.”

— Kristin Cashore

17. “Don’t you think it’s the people that make a place feel like home?”

— Kristin Cashore

18. “My life is an apology for the life of my father.”

— Kristin Cashore

19. “At least her last words to him had been words of love. But she wished she’d told him just how much she loved him. How much she had to thank him for, how many good things he had done. She hadn’t told him nearly enough.”

— Kristin Cashore

20. “I must stop wishing for things to happen. Because something will happen eventually, and when it does, I’ll be bound to wish it hadn’t.”

— Kristin Cashore

21. “Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.”

— Kristin Cashore

22. “Your brand of comfort bears some similarity to your tactical offense.”

— Kristin Cashore

23. “Los amigos no te mienten. Los amigos intentan comprenderte.”

— Kristin Cashore

24. “Tu capacidad para no ver lo evidente es asombrosa.”

— Kristin Cashore

25. “Hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship? I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden.”

— Kristin Cashore

26. “Location: Amsterdam, Where Fire Is Called “Vlam.”

— Kristin Cashore

27. “Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks and scream if I hear any strange noises.”

— Kristin Cashore

28. “She didn’t want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her.”

— Kristin Cashore

29. “It has been a hard lesson to learn, that greatness requires suffering.”

— Kristin Cashore

30. “Katsa turned to Po with tears in her eyes. ‘He’ll be so angry.’ ‘He won’t stay angry forever.’ ‘Won’t he?’ she said. ‘People do sometimes.’ ‘Do they?’ he said. ‘Reasonable people? I hope that’s not true.’ Katsa gave him a funny look, but didn’t answer. Resumed hugging herself and kicking things.”

— Kristin Cashore

31. “There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness.”

— Kristin Cashore

32. “Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder.”

— Kristin Cashore

33. “It’s as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.”

— Kristin Cashore

34. “But that’s how memory works,” Bitterblue said quietly. “Things disappear without your permission, they come back again without your permission.” And sometimes they come back incomplete or warped.”

— Kristin Cashore

35. “Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder, and Randa didn’t deserve it. And even though she wanted what the voice wanted, she didn’t think she had the courage for it.”

— Kristin Cashore

36. “In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.”

— Kristin Cashore

37. “Things don’t ever stay the same. Natural beginnings come to natural or unnatural ends.”

— Kristin Cashore

38. “His name was Death. It was pronounced to rhyme with “teeth”, but Bitterblue liked to mispronounce it by accident on occassion.”

— Kristin Cashore

39. “Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she’d threatened him so brutally. When you’re a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.”

— Kristin Cashore

40. “She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.”

— Kristin Cashore

41. “Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone’s but her own.”

— Kristin Cashore

42. “He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.”

— Kristin Cashore

43. “What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face.”

— Kristin Cashore

44. “And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need- if a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from anything.”

— Kristin Cashore

45. “If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation – well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a gray-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.”

— Kristin Cashore

46. “Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.”

— Kristin Cashore

47. “And what was it about the dark that made her question things she’d never questioned before, in the day.”

— Kristin Cashore

48. “I’m not good at love. I’m like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away.”

— Kristin Cashore

49. “When you’re a monster, you are thanked and praised for not being a monster.”

— Kristin Cashore

50. “If her enemies were Brigan’s friends and her friends were Brigan’s enemies, then the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again.”

— Kristin Cashore