Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “It’s you I love,” he says. “I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.”

— Holly Black

152. “The odd thing about ambition is this: You can acquire it like a fever, but it is not so easy to shed. Once, I was content to hope for knighthood and the power to force Cardan and his friends to leave me alone. All I wanted was to find some place to fit in here in Faerie. Now I wonder what it would be like to choose the next king.”

— Holly Black

153. “To family and Faerieland and pizza and stories and new beginnings and scheming great schemes. I can toast to that.”

— Holly Black

154. “I thought love was just supposed to happen when you least expected it, like a sap to the skull.”

— Holly Black

155. “Love is a noble cause. How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?”

— Holly Black

156. “Yes, my great villan, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can.”

— Holly Black

157. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear those words,” he says. “You don’t want me dead.”

— Holly Black

158. “Mithridatism, it’s called. Isn’t that a funny name? The process of eating poison to build up immunity. So long as I don’t die from it, I’ll be harder to kill.”

— Holly Black

159. “The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.”

— Holly Black

160. “I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven’t been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.”

— Holly Black

161. “I haven’t had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone’s dead and my root beer’s gone.”

— Holly Black

162. “El verdadero poder no se concede, y tampoco se puede arrebatar.”

— Holly Black

163. “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

164. “Faeries make up for their inability to lie with a panoply of deceptions and cruelties. Twisted words, pranks, omissions, riddles, scandals, not to mention their revenges upon one another for ancient, half-remembered slights. Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.”

— Holly Black

165. “You love him, too, I think. You’ve loved him since before you were a prisoner of the Undersea. You loved him when you agreed to marry him. Once this is over, I will find the bravery to tell him.”

— Holly Black

166. “Si eres la enfermedad, supongo que tampoco puedes ser la cura.”

— Holly Black

167. “I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”

— Holly Black

168. “The disturbing thing about Cardan is how well he plays the fool to disguise his own cleverness.”

— Holly Black

169. “Revenge is sweet, but ice cream is sweeter.” She goes to the freezer and removes a tub of mint chocolate chip. She brings that and two spoons back to the sofa. “For now, accept this delight, unworthy though it is for the Queen of Faerie in exile.”

— Holly Black

170. “It’s the flaw that brings out the beauty.”

— Holly Black

171. “A well-seasoned strategist waits for the right opportunity.”

— Holly Black

172. “We have lived in our armor for so long, you and I. And now I am not sure if either of us knows how to removes it.”

— Holly Black

173. “I like for things to happen, for stories to unfold. And if I can’t find a good enough story, I make one.”

— Holly Black

174. “Go ahead. Insult me.” His eyebrows go up. “I don’t take commands from mortals,” he says with his customary cruel smile.”

— Holly Black

175. “With dawn of the new year on the horizon, I resolved to exert my will on the world.”

— Holly Black

176. “You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing.”

— Holly Black

177. “The more powerful you become, the more others will find ways to master you. They’ll do it through those you love and those you hate. They will find the bit and the bridle that fits your mouth and will make you yield.”

— Holly Black

178. “Love is stupid. All we do is break one another’s hearts.”

— Holly Black

179. “It was terrifying,” he says, “watching you fall. I mean, you’re generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you. And then I was furious. I am not sure I have ever been that angry before.” “Mortals are fragile,” I say. “Not you,” he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. “You never break.”

— Holly Black

180. “As the last Seelie left the hall, Roiben, self-declared King of the Unseelie Court, nearly fell into his throne. Kaye tried to smile at him, but he was not looking at her. He was staring out across the brugh with eyes the color of falling ash. Corny had not stopped laughing.”

— Holly Black

181. “Do you know what the Turkish say about coffee? It should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.”

— Holly Black

182. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of thing long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.”

— Holly Black

183. “I expect her to say The Liar. She gives me a tricksy grin, full of secrets. “What else? The Queen.”

— Holly Black

184. “Secrets hurt the keeper more than you think.”

— Holly Black

185. “Hazel had received a baby doll that, if you filled it with water, you could squeeze and make it pee, even though she’d wanted a sword like her brother’s.”

— Holly Black

186. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.”

— Holly Black

187. “I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy.”

— Holly Black

188. “Cardan lies on the rug with one arm propping up his head and the other slung across Jude’s waist. He understands everything and nothing he sees on the screen- just as he understands everything and nothing about being here with her family. He feels like a feral cat that might bite out of habit.”

— Holly Black

189. “Three is an odd configuration of sisters. There’s always one on the outside.”

— Holly Black

190. “More and more I feel like the boy who cut off his nose to spite his face.”

— Holly Black

191. “But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”

— Holly Black

192. “I want to tell you so many lies.”

— Holly Black

193. “Fairy tales have a moral: Stay on the path. Don’t trust wolves. Don’t steal things, not even things you think no normal person would care about. Share your food but don’t trust people who want to share their good with you; don’t eat their shiny red apples, not their candy houses, nor any of it. Be nice, always nice, and polite to everyone: kings and beggars, witches and wounded bears. Don’t break a promise.”

— Holly Black

194. “We are all capable of great self-deception when it serves us.”

— Holly Black

195. “What does that mean?” The Thistlewitch smiled. “Time will tell. It always does.”

— Holly Black

196. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Sam says, “Except, apparently, off a roof.”

— Holly Black

197. “You are more dangerous than daybreak.”

— Holly Black

198. “The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.”

— Holly Black

199. “Plunge a heated sword into oil, and any small flaw will turn into a crack. But quenched in blood as you were, none of you broke. You were only hardened.”

— Holly Black

200. “Seelie and Unseelie, Wild Folk and Shy Folk, I am glad to have you march under my banner, glad of your loyalty, grateful for your honor.” His gaze goes to me. “To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.”

— Holly Black