Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “A heart of stone can still be broken.”

— Holly Black

52. “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

53. “Maybe it isn’t the worst thing to want to be loved, even if you’re not. Even if it hurts. Maybe being human isn’t always being weak.”

— Holly Black

54. “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

55. “Wisdom is for the meek,” he returns. “And it seldom helps them as much as they believe it will. After all, as wise as you are, you still married Locke. Of course, perhaps you are wiser than even that – perhaps you’re so wise you made yourself a widow, too.”

— Holly Black

56. “This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.”

— Holly Black

57. “Like all schools, we are always interested in learning, in research, in pushing the limits of knowledge. But we must balance that with our duty to protect the world, even from ourselves.”

— Holly Black

58. “You’ve got to grow where you’re planted.”

— Holly Black

59. “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

60. “Rules are different for poets.”

— Holly Black

61. “Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.”

— Holly Black

62. “Mutually assured destruction.”

— Holly Black

63. “She loved him so much, that it already hurt. It already felt like he’d broken her heart.”

— Holly Black

64. “I survive at the edge of friends circles.”

— Holly Black

65. “It’s not that I don’t know that it’s a bad idea. It’s that, lately, bad ideas have a particular hold over me.”

— Holly Black

66. “Cruddy Mouthbreather.”

— Holly Black

67. “He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.” I am shocked into silence.”

— Holly Black

68. “I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

70. “We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

72. “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

73. “The whole place looks straight out of a fairy tale, the kind where love is a simple thing. never the cause of pain.”

— Holly Black

74. “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

75. “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

76. “One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.”

— Holly Black

77. “Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.”

— Holly Black

78. “I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.”

— Holly Black

79. “There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man.”

— Holly Black

80. “Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

82. “He’s flint, you’re tinder.”

— Holly Black

83. “Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.”

— Holly Black

84. “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

85. “Kill him before he makes you love him.”

— Holly Black

86. “I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.”

— Holly Black

87. “I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. “And you.” He looks at me, his lips curving in something that’s not quite a smile; it’s more and less than that. “I knew little else, but I always knew you.” And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.”

— Holly Black

88. “He presses his mouth to the pulse point of my wrist, racing in time with my heart. “Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips.” His eyes are black with desire. “By you, I am forever undone.”

— Holly Black

89. “Fire can either burn down your house or warm it.”

— Holly Black

90. “The first boy I fell in love with didn’t know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”

— Holly Black

91. “Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”

— Holly Black

92. “A sharp tongue is no match for a sharp tooth.”

— Holly Black

93. “She’s my wife,” Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.”

— Holly Black

94. “There’s always something left to lose.”

— Holly Black

95. “Marry me,” he says. “Become the Queen of Elfhame.”

— Holly Black

96. “I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.”

— Holly Black

97. “Love changes us, but we change how we love too.”

— Holly Black

98. “Only idiots aren’t scared of things that are scary.”

— Holly Black

99. “Whoever controls the king, controls the kingdom.”

— Holly Black

100. “And no matter how eager you are for it, you cannot make the moon set nor rise any faster.”

— Holly Black