Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “You’re a good little murderer, Dulcamara said.”

— Holly Black

452. “Air all around him, there was air in the water, all elements were one, fire and earth, air and water. All are but one thing, not four, not two, and not three, but one. He.”

— Holly Black

453. “She should tell him no, but instead she seemed to be running toward trouble, leaving no stone unturned, no boy unkissed, no crush abandoned, and no bad idea unembraced.”

— Holly Black

454. “Now that I’ve started touching her, I can’t seem to stop. Like somehow the language of my hands will tell her all the things I don’t know how to say out loud.”

— Holly Black

455. “There had been plenty of books and films romanticizing vampires over the last century. It was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.”

— Holly Black

456. “He was ruinously beautiful in the way that knives and scalpels can be beautiful.”

— Holly Black

457. “I step out of my second life the same way I stepped out of my first, holding too few things and with great uncertainty about what will happen next.”

— Holly Black

458. “Stories like that were will-o’-the-wisps, glowing in the deepest, darkest parts of forests, leading travelers farther and farther from safety, out toward an ever-moving mark.”

— Holly Black

459. “Automotones, escaped.”

— Holly Black

460. “That’s the spirit.” Aaron hid a grin. He was already wearing his armband, just above his elbow. Somehow he managed to make it look cool. Call had tied his around his forearm and was fairly sure it looked like a bandage.”

— Holly Black

461. “As I make my way back to the tournament and my sisters, I can’t stop thinking of Cardan’s shocked face, nor can I stop considering Locke’s smile. I am not altogether sure which is more thrilling and which more dangerous.”

— Holly Black

462. “I guess he’s used to suspicious people with crappy tempers. Or maybe I’ve never seemed as normal as I thought.”

— Holly Black

463. “Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them.”

— Holly Black

464. “He’s quiet then. We lie next to each other, twin corpses waiting for burial.”

— Holly Black

465. “She went to all the parties and kissed all the boys, shoring up fun against despair, against the suffocating terror that loomed over her.”

— Holly Black

466. “It was readers that needed to be protected, he thought. Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.”

— Holly Black

467. “You’re young, but you’re ambitious in the way that perhaps only the young can be.”

— Holly Black

468. “After all, when you were already in a slippery place, reality-wise, you couldn’t afford to assume that things would be straightforward from here on in.”

— Holly Black

469. “She wanted to tell him about Valentina and how she had to go, how she’d promised she’s help, and how she would help, except that right then she didn’t want to help anyone so much as to kiss him and maybe bite him again, too, but mostly kiss him and do all the things that came after kissing.”

— Holly Black

470. “But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads.”

— Holly Black

471. “She didn’t have to use any magic. I trust you. I trusted you.”

— Holly Black

472. “It’s sweet. All this trouble for a kitty.”

— Holly Black

473. “She was unprepared for how much the way into Coldtown looked like a shoddily run DMV.”

— Holly Black

474. “I can feel myself start to tremble.”

— Holly Black

475. “All friendships are negotiations of power.”

— Holly Black

476. “He knew about cures and poultices and the medicinal value of kisses.”

— Holly Black

477. “I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron’s house. I’m the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he’s stolen. Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster’s.”

— Holly Black

478. “I said ten years, but perhaps seven will be enough. That’s not so long. Seven years of drinking poison, of never sleeping, of living on high alert. Seven more years, and then maybe Faerie will be a safer, better land. And I will have earned my place in it. The great game, Locke had called it when he accused me of playing it. I wasn’t then, but I am now. And maybe I learned something from Locke. He made me into a story, and now I am going to make a story out of someone else.”

— Holly Black

479. “Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see.”

— Holly Black

480. “When I was a kid and brought friends over, I was defiantly proud of the chaos. I liked that I knew how to jump over the piles and the shattered glass while they stumbled. Now it just seems like an ocean of crazy that I have no way to explain.”

— Holly Black

481. “And I will tell you all my stories soon; no more deceptions. But now night is coming for you. We have tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

— Holly Black

482. “After spending months living in the orderly dorms of Wallingford, where they give you a Saturday detention if your room doesn’t pass semi-regular inspections, I feel the old conflicting sense of familiarity and disgust.”

— Holly Black

483. “The military put up barricades around the areas of the cities where the infections broke out. That was the way the first Coldtowns were founded. Vampirism is an American problem, the BBC declared. But the next outbreak was in Hong Kong, then Yokohama, then Marseille, then Brecht, then Liverpool. After that, it spread across Europe like wildfire.”

— Holly Black

484. “Once, she made a boy come out of his house and kiss her under the streetlight. It was her first kiss. She thinks it was probably his, too. She never told him and she never, ever will.”

— Holly Black

485. “Things will be as they always are,” he tells me. “Only more so.”

— Holly Black

486. “He thinks of Elienad, lying beneath tables, listening to the inflections of lies. Watching the hesitations, the gestures, the tensed muscles. Learning a language the king was unaware he even spoke.”

— Holly Black

487. “I say, because if she doesn’t want to talk about that part, she doesn’t have to.”

— Holly Black

488. “Pain makes you strong... Get used to the weight.”

— Holly Black

489. “She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered.”

— Holly Black

490. “Some promises aren’t worth keeping.”

— Holly Black

491. “I’m no longer a child, and I don’t need comfort.”

— Holly Black

492. “Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill monsters and feel quite proud of themselves.”

— Holly Black

493. “I love my parents’ murderer; I suppose I could love anyone.”

— Holly Black

494. “What they don’t realize is this: Yes, they frighten me, but I have always been scared, since the day I got here. I was raised by the man who murdered my parents, reared in a land of monsters. I live with that fear, let it settle into my bones, and ignore it. If I didn’t pretend not to be scared, I would hide under my owl-down coverlets in Madoc’s estate forever. I would lie there and scream until there was nothing left of me. I refuse to do that. I will not do that.”

— Holly Black

495. “Oak makes a low moan and tries to sit up. ‘Jude,’ he mutters. ‘Jude, we can’t just let him die.”

— Holly Black

496. “I’m afraid my voice is going to break. I am afraid she is going to hear how much this hurts.”

— Holly Black

497. “You’ve delivered your message. I have no bit of doggerel to send back – my own fault for having a seneschal who cannot double as my Court Poet – but I will be sure to crumple up some paper and drop it into the water when I do.”

— Holly Black

498. “Prince Balekin smiles back as though their smiles could duel without the rest of them even being involved.”

— Holly Black

499. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He grabs my hand, possibly to keep me from hitting him again. Our fingers lace together. “No, it’s not that, not exactly. I didn’t think I could hurt you. And I never thought you would be afraid of me.”

— Holly Black

500. “I did it to get what I want. Maybe I should regret that, but I can’t. Sometimes you do the bad thing and hope for the good result.”

— Holly Black