Frances > Frances's Quotes

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Wild birds die in cages.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Think of me sometimes," he returned. "When the snowdrops have bloomed and the snow has melted.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark. One man’s monster is another man’s beloved. The wise know that.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I carve things of wood because things made by effort are more real than things made by wishing.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“We who live forever can know no courage, nor do we love enough to give our lives.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“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, The Winter of the Witch

“I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Now hear me. Before the end, you will pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die by your own choosing, and weep for a nightingale.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“With that sapphire, he bound your strength to him, but the magic did what he did not intend; it made him strong but also pulled him closer and closer to mortality, so that he was hungry for life, more than a man and less a demon. So that he loved you, and did not know what to do.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“How? I am a demon and a nightmare; I die every spring, and I will live forever.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“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, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Has the world run dry of warriors?' She asked. 'All out of brave lords? Are they sending out maidens these days to do the work of heroes?'
'There were no heroes,' said Vasya between her teeth. 'There was only me.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“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, The Winter of the Witch

“Close your eyes," he said into her ear. "Come with me." She did so, and suddenly she saw what he saw. She was the wind, the clouds gathering in the smoky sky, the thick snow of deep winter. She was nothing. She was everything. The power gathered somewhere in the space between them, between her flickers of awareness. There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not. She was beyond wanting anything. She didn't care whether she lived or died. She could only feel; the gathering storm, the breath of the wind.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“You might get to know characters in books, Ollie thought, but getting to know a human was an entirely different thing.”
― Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

“It is time to put aside dreaming. Fairy tales are sweet on winter nights, nothing more.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“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, The Bear and the Nightingale

“I have been running through the dark, trying to save all who have need of me. I have done good and I have done evil, but I am neither. I am only myself.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I believe in memory. I believe in remembering someone you love so well that it becomes kind of like a ghost. You remember someone so hard that it feels like they're in the next room, just around the corner, that they could walk in any minute.”
― Katherine Arden, Dead Voices

“She did not want to see hope in his eyes. She wanted him to be a monster. But monsters were for children.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“You don't waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow.”
― Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

“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, The Winter of the Witch

“ ‘You are made of snow,’ Morozko the frost-demon warned her, when she met him in the forest. ‘You cannot love and be immortal.’ As the winter waned, the frost-demon grew fainter, until he was only visible in the deepest shade of the wood. Men thought he was but a breeze in the holly-bushes. ‘You were born of winter and you will live forever. But if you touch the fire you will die.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest—I did not count on that.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.”
― Nikita Gill

“You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”
― Nikita Gill