Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is like licking Honey from a Thorn.”

— Holly Black

2. “To remind me, pain is the best teacher.”

— Holly Black

3. “Every hero is the villain of his own story.”

— Holly Black

4. “I need to stop fantasizing about running away to some other life and start figuring out the one I have.”

— Holly Black

5. “If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”

— Holly Black

6. “Revenge is sweet, but ice cream is sweeter.”

— Holly Black

7. “Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.”

— Holly Black

8. “The truth is messy. It’s raw and uncomfortable. You can’t blame people for preferring lies.”

— Holly Black

9. “Perhaps I am foolish, but I am not a fool.”

— Holly Black

10. “You have only seen the least of what I can do.”

— Holly Black

11. “It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes.”

— Holly Black

12. “Instead, it just reminded her that sometimes there were no good choices.”

— Holly Black

13. “Every plan is a house of cards.”

— Holly Black

14. “If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.”

— Holly Black

15. “I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,′ Cardan returns.”

— Holly Black

16. “Let’s have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.”

— Holly Black

17. “I’m sorry I kissed you- it was selfish and it upset you- but you can’t ask me to pretend I didnt want to.”

— Holly Black

18. “If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely you should be friend to my friend.”

— Holly Black

19. “She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.”

— Holly Black

20. “Lie until even you believe it – that’s the real secret of lying.”

— Holly Black

21. “Sharpen your heart.”

— Holly Black

22. “Those who really love you don’t mean to hurt you and if they do, you can’t see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.”

— Holly Black

23. “If you hurt me, I wouldn’t cry. I would hurt you back.”

— Holly Black

24. “Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today’s tasks.”

— Holly Black

25. “What is a king without a crown? That’s a riddle, but one to which we all know the answer: no king at all.”

— Holly Black

26. “We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair.”

— Holly Black

27. “Once someone’s hurt you, it’s harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn’t stop you from wanting them.”

— Holly Black

28. “What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”

— Holly Black

29. “She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.”

— Holly Black

30. “I get why he chose her. I just wish she had chosen me.”

— Holly Black

31. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.” I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?” He grins up at me. “They missed.”

— Holly Black

32. “I hate being a fool. I hate the idea of my emotions getting the better of me, making me weak. But my fear of being a fool turned me into one.”

— Holly Black

33. “Come be angry at a nearer distance.”

— Holly Black

34. “Changing is what people do when they have no options left.”

— Holly Black

35. “You can’t play pretend forever.”

— Holly Black

36. “That’s family for you. Can’t live with them, can’t murder them.”

— Holly Black

37. “Mirroring behavior. When a mark takes a drink from his water glass, so should you. When he smiles, so should you. Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique.”

— Holly Black

38. “All elements have a counterweight. Fire is the counterweight of water. Air is the counterweight of earth. The counterweight of chaos is the soul.”

— Holly Black

39. “A heart of stone can still be broken.”

— Holly Black

40. “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold. Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.”

— Holly Black

41. “Don’t be drinking the Haterade.”

— Holly Black

42. “Rules are different for poets.”

— Holly Black

43. “She’d always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.”

— Holly Black

44. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

— Holly Black

45. “Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.”

— Holly Black

46. “If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”

— Holly Black

47. “By you, I am forever undone.”

— Holly Black

Featured in: Romance Quotes

48. “Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”

— Holly Black

49. “Sweet Jude, you’re my dearest punishment.”

— Holly Black

50. “You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.”

— Holly Black