Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Jude. You are in no mood for games, very well. I am in no mood for them, either. Let me write it outright; You are pardoned. I revoke your banishment. I rescind my words. Come home. Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must. Just come home.”

— Holly Black

102. “I knew little else, but I always knew you.”

— Holly Black

103. “If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.”

— Holly Black

104. “I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone – truly gone beneath the waves – I hated myself as I never have before.”

— Holly Black

105. “Life’s full of opportunities to make crappy decisions that feel good. And after the first one, the rest get a whole lot easier.”

— Holly Black

106. “Show your power by appearing powerless.”

— Holly Black

107. “Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.”

— Holly Black

108. “Jude, you can’t really think I don’t know it’s you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.”

— Holly Black

109. “I guess it’s true; no one will ever love you like your family.”

— Holly Black

110. “That boy is your weakness.”

— Holly Black

111. “Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”

— Holly Black

112. “Crippled things are always more beautiful. It’s the flaw that brings out beauty.”

— Holly Black

113. “That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down.”

— Holly Black

114. “Our lives are the only real thing we have, our only coin. We get to buy what we want with them.”

— Holly Black

115. “Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.”

— Holly Black

116. “She tastes like every dark thought I’ve ever had.”

— Holly Black

117. “Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.”

— Holly Black

118. “Ruthless. That’s my girl.”

— Holly Black

119. “In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.”

— Holly Black

120. “You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only thing I chose for myself. The only thing I want.”

— Holly Black

121. “I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING.”

— Holly Black

122. “He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you the more for it.”

— Holly Black

123. “You really do want me,′ I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. ‘And you hate it.”

— Holly Black

124. “Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”

— Holly Black

125. “And the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.”

— Holly Black

126. “Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I’m an idiot, basically – an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he’s here. Where else would he be? Seriously, what else could go wrong?”

— Holly Black

127. “You can take a thing when no one’s looking. But defending it, even with all the advantage on your side, is no easy task,” Madoc told her with a laugh. She looked up to find him offering her a hand. “Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”

— Holly Black

128. “I can’t trust the people I care about not to hurt me. And I’m not sure I can trust myself not to hurt them, either.”

— Holly Black

129. “Watching my back is the perfect opportunity to stick a knife in it.”

— Holly Black

130. “He’s the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.”

— Holly Black

131. “I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.”

— Holly Black

132. “It occurs to me that if I kill him, I can finally stop thinking about him. If I kill him, I won’t have to feel like this anymore.”

— Holly Black

133. “Sometimes it’s easier to be mad at the people close to us,” Vivi said, “than to be mad at the people who deserve it.”

— Holly Black

134. “Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”

— Holly Black

135. “He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.”

— Holly Black

136. “Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams – will be sweeter than another’s cries of love.”

— Holly Black

137. “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your hearts blood should run cold.”

— Holly Black

138. “Jude never loved Locke.” My face feels hot, but my shame is an excellent cover to hide behind. “She loved.”

— Holly Black

139. “Guard your mortal heart.”

— Holly Black

140. “I only hope he doesn’t taste the bitterness of poison on my lips.”

— Holly Black

141. “Kaye: You know what the sun looks like? Janet: No, What? Kaye: Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water. Janet: That’s gross, Kaye. Kaye: And the moon is just watching. She’s just watching him die. She must have driven him to it.”

— Holly Black

142. “She can’t help it. She loves the con. I tell myself I’m not like her, but I have to admit I love it too.”

— Holly Black

143. “I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.”

— Holly Black

144. “No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.”

— Holly Black

145. “Do you know what mortal means? It means born to die. It means deserving of death. That’s what you are, what defines you – dying.”

— Holly Black

146. “I can’t help feeling a little bit competitive and a little bit disappointed in myself that I’m already so far behind. After all, Yulikova thinks Barron has a real future with the Bureau. She told me so. I told her that sociopaths are relentlessly charming. I think she figured I was joking.”

— Holly Black

147. “There’s a monster in our wood. She’ll get you if you’re not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming... home.”

— Holly Black

148. “Once upon a time, there was a human girl stolen away by faeries, and because of that, she swore to destroy them.”

— Holly Black

149. “She’s looking around the forest, as though if she can prove it isn’t magic, then nothing else is, either. Which is stupid. All forests are magic.”

— Holly Black

150. “I remember what it was to hate him with the whole of my heart, but I’ve remembered too late.”

— Holly Black