Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I survive at the edge of friends circles.”

— Holly Black

102. “A second book that makes you rethink the first book is the Holy Grail of a series.”

— Holly Black

103. “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

104. “If you don’t know why you’re apologizing, your apology probably sucks.”

— Holly Black

105. “She fell asleep like a flame being extinguished.”

— Holly Black

106. “She came out of sleep like a thunderclap – waking from dreams so deep and dark that she couldn’t remember anything but dirt and hands pulling her down into graves with cities inside them.”

— Holly Black

107. “Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.”

— Holly Black

108. “Cruddy Mouthbreather.”

— Holly Black

109. “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

110. “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

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

— Holly Black

112. “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

113. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

117. “He’s flint, you’re tinder.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

119. “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

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

— Holly Black

121. “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

122. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

125. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

130. “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

131. “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

132. “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

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

— Holly Black

134. “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

135. “That boy is your weakness.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

137. “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

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

— Holly Black

139. “Ruthless. That’s my girl.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

142. “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

143. “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

144. “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

145. “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

146. “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

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

— Holly Black

148. “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

149. “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

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

— Holly Black