Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.”

— Holly Black

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

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

— Holly Black

157. “Guard your mortal heart.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

159. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Holly Black

167. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

171. “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

172. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

175. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

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

— Holly Black

186. “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

187. “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

188. “I have said that he has the power to deliver a compliment and make it hurt. So, too, he can say something that ought to be insulting and deliver it in such a way that it feels like being truly seen.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

195. “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

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

— Holly Black

197. “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

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

— Holly Black

199. “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

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

— Holly Black