Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “I expect her to say The Liar. She gives me a tricksy grin, full of secrets. “What else? The Queen.”

— Holly Black

202. “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

203. “You are more dangerous than daybreak.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

206. “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

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

— Holly Black

208. “Nicasia’s wrong about me. I don’t desire to do as well in the tournament as one of the fey. I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

211. “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

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

— Holly Black

213. “I hate you because your father loves you even though you’re a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.”

— Holly Black

214. “Space is so dark that looking out at it confounds the brain. The more you stare at the vastness of it, at the hanging stars and the swirling galaxies, the more you start to notice how imprecise words like ‘dark’ and ‘black’ and ‘endless’ are. There are so many gradients of shadow, all of them terrifying to me. That’s why I keep the lights on.”

— Holly Black

215. “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

216. “I thought I was supposed to be good and follow the rules,” I say. “But I am done with being weak. I am done with being good. I think I am going to be something else.”

— Holly Black

217. “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

218. “And yet, I don’t regret it now. Having stepped off the edge, what I want to do is fall.”

— Holly Black

219. “You will need me to sweet-talk the door.”

— Holly Black

220. “But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you’ve swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.”

— Holly Black

221. “I kissed him on the mouth, and then I threatened to kiss him some more if he didn’t do exactly what I wanted.”

— Holly Black

222. “They are twilight creatures, beings of dawn and dusk, of standing between one thing and another, of not quite and almost, of borderlands and shadows.”

— Holly Black

223. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you.”

— Holly Black

224. “And to coddle your ego, I have made myself less. I have made myself small, I have kept my head down. But it wasn’t enough to make you leave Taryn and me alone, so I’m not going to do that anymore. “I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance.”

— Holly Black

225. “When you don’t know what you’re searching for, you have to look absolutely everywhere.”

— Holly Black

226. “I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up. He called it his second smile.”

— Holly Black

227. “I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don’t even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I’m going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn’t involve dying.”

— Holly Black

228. “We may not die from age, but we grow weary with it.”

— Holly Black

229. “Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.”

— Holly Black

230. “In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you.”

— Holly Black

231. “Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky. Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs. We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.”

— Holly Black

232. “Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.”

— Holly Black

233. “And if I wanted to kill myself, I wouldn’t throw myself off a roof. And if I was going to throw myself off a roof, I would put on some pants before I did it.”

— Holly Black

234. “I am the Queen of Elfhame. Even though I am the queen in exile, I am still the queen. And that means Madoc isn’t just trying to take Cardan’s throne. He’s trying to take mine.”

— Holly Black

235. “Anyone who offers up their heart on a silver platter deserves what they get.”

— Holly Black

236. “I can’t believe he said that and then just walked out, leaving me reeling. I am going to STRANGLE him.”

— Holly Black

237. “It’s hard to look at Barron now, but I do. He’s smirking. His black hair and black suit make him into a shadow, as if I conjured some dark mirror of myself.”

— Holly Black

238. “I haul around and slap him. It’s a stinging blow, smearing the gold on his cheekbone and causing his skin to redden. We stare at each other for long moments, breathing hard. His eyes are bright with something entirely different from anger. I am in over my head. I am drowning.”

— Holly Black

239. “We love until we do not. For us, love doesn’t fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.”

— Holly Black

240. “She didn’t know how much she’d been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn’t.”

— Holly Black

241. “She knew she shouldn’t feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.”

— Holly Black

242. “She took a deep breath, “Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?” His expression turned very strange, almost as if she’d struck him, “yes,” he said finally. -Tana and Gavriel-page 33- chapter 5.”

— Holly Black

243. “Well fine, then. I could send you out to win my favor. Possibly on a quest involving bringing a large mug of coffee and a doughnut. Or the wholesale slaughter of all my enemies. I haven’t decided which.”

— Holly Black

244. “Some people have stuffed animals,” Aaron said with a shrug. “Other people have knives.”

— Holly Black

245. “He smiled, a real smile, the kind real boys gave real girls. “It’s been a very long time since anyone worried for me.”

— Holly Black

246. “There was a brittleness in her tone, and Baphen was uncomfortably reminded that some prophecies are fulfilled by the very actions meant to prevent them.”

— Holly Black

247. “You think a lizard is trying to kill me? And he faked a note from Celia? – Call.”

— Holly Black

248. “Better she never be a bride than wind up a widow.”

— Holly Black

249. “Just another dull night in Fairfold, where everyone’s a lunatic or an elf.”

— Holly Black

250. “I love you like in the storybooks. I love you like in the ballads. I love you like a lightning bolt. I’ve loved you since the third month you came and spoke with me. I loved that you made me want to laugh. I loved the way you were kind and the way you would pause when you spoke, as though you were waiting for me to answer you. I love you and I am mocking no one when I kiss you, no one at all.”

— Holly Black