Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 6 of 10

251. “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

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

— Holly Black

253. “If you want my advice,” he says slowly, “love doesn’t grow well, fed on pain. Grant me that I know that at least.”

— Holly Black

254. “That’s what mortal means,” I say with a sigh that I don’t have to fake. “We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.”

— Holly Black

255. “Wicked girl. Yet you let your sister take the brunt of my ire. That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

— Holly Black

256. “I’ve wanted this and feared it, and now that it’s happening, I don’t know how I will ever want anything else.”

— Holly Black

257. “I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him. If he can rationalize what I did to him, it’s easy to imagine how he rationalized what he did to me.”

— Holly Black

258. “She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.”

— Holly Black

259. “It’s shocking,” he says, as though he’s giving me some great compliment. “I know humans can lie, but to watch you do it is incredible. Do it again.”

— Holly Black

260. “Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.”

— Holly Black

261. “I am not sure I sleep, but I do dream.”

— Holly Black

262. “I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.”

— Holly Black

263. “Cardan grins at me as though we’ve been great friends all our lives. I forgot how charming he can be – and how dangerous that is.”

— Holly Black

264. “He picked up her purse from where it rested beside her and shook it gently. “In case you were concerned. All just as you left it.” She nodded. “Thanks. Although I guess whether I’ll ever get to use that marker is pretty up in the air right now.” “You should have let me eat her in that parking lot,” Gavriel said, raising his eyebrows.”

— Holly Black

265. “If she was going to die, she might as well die sarcastic.”

— Holly Black

266. “She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn.”

— Holly Black

267. “I have, for mortals, the feeling of falling in love is very much like the feeling of fear.”

— Holly Black

268. “Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”

— Holly Black

269. “You’re awful.” He said it as though he was delighted. “And the worst part is that you believe otherwise.”

— Holly Black

270. “They say that nameless things change constantly – that names fix them in place like pins.”

— Holly Black

271. “Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.”

— Holly Black

272. “Legends need not concern themselves with something as small as happiness.”

— Holly Black

273. “You’re like this leopard who’s pretending to be a house cat.”

— Holly Black

274. “I take a deep breath, at home and homesick all at the same time.”

— Holly Black

275. “Leaves don’t grow back onto a vine, cracked walnuts don’t fit back into their shells, and girlfriends who’ve been enchanted don’t just wake up and decide to let things slide with their terrifying exes.”

— Holly Black

276. “There you are,” Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”

— Holly Black

277. “I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.”

— Holly Black

278. “Neither loyalty nor love should be compelled.”

— Holly Black

279. “And if the serpent grows in monstrousness and corruption, if it poisons the land of Elfhame itself, then let me be the queen of monsters. Let me rule over that blackened land with my redcap father as a puppet by my side. Let me be feared and never again afraid.”

— Holly Black

280. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversations about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.” – Cardan Greenbriar, The Cruel Prince.”

— Holly Black

281. “Happiness isn’t something to carefully measure out in spoonfuls as though it’s medicine. I don’t need you to suffer to prove your love, and I definitely don’t need you to hide your suffering. I want to shoulder half our burden.”

— Holly Black

282. “Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously.”

— Holly Black

283. “You might beg to differ. So long as you’re begging, he doesn’t mind a bit.”

— Holly Black

284. “Would an Evil Overlord drink the last cup of coffee in the pot? Which book would an Evil Overlord take out from the library? Was dressing in all black a definite Evil Overlord move, or a legitimate choice on laundry day?”

— Holly Black

285. “If there is nothing but this;” Roiben said. “If we are to be shadows, changeless and forgotten, we will have to dine on these memories for the rest of our days. Don’t you want a few more moments to chew over?”

— Holly Black

286. “Cosa sarei potuta diventare se avessi smesso di preoccuparmi della morte, del dolore, di tutto? Se avessi smesso di cercare un senso di appartenenza? Invece di avere paura, sarei diventata io quella da temere.”

— Holly Black

287. “You don’t think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?”

— Holly Black

288. “A mortal had woven it, a man who, having caught sight of the Seelie queen, had spent the remainder of his short life weaving depictions of her. He had died of starvation, raw, red fingers staining the final tapestry.”

— Holly Black

289. “He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.”

— Holly Black

290. “An unhappy childhood is supposed to make you grow up fast, but I still feel like a kid a lot of the time.”

— Holly Black

291. “The problem with cell phones is that you can’t slam them down into a cradle when you hang up. Your only option is to throw them, and if you do, they just skitter across the floor and crack their case. It’s not satisfying at all. I close my eyes and bend down to pick up the pieces.”

— Holly Black

292. “Except that I have no marketable skills other than swinging around a sword and making up riddles, neither of which probably pay all that well.”

— Holly Black

293. “And if I never change back? If I’m not human enough anymore?” He smiled; she could feel it against her skin. “Then we’ll go hunt vampires together and you’ll drink their blood.” “The Lady or The Tiger,” she said, thinking of the drinking game she’d played at the farmhouse, thinking of the story that never ended, of a coin spinning without falling on heads or tails. “My lady, the tiger,” he told her, and got up to turn the camera back on.”

— Holly Black

294. “You’re yourself,” Tana said, grinning. “More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can’t see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.”

— Holly Black

295. “Sam: You know what I wish? Cassel: What? Sam: That someone would covert my bed into a robot that would fight other bed robots to the death for me.”

— Holly Black

296. “You’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet.”

— Holly Black

297. “He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.”

— Holly Black

298. “I’m the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he’s stolen.”

— Holly Black

299. “After all, who wants to die slowly when you can die fast? Me.”

— Holly Black

300. “I’m not a monster, I’d told her, back when I said I would never hurt Oak. But maybe being a monster was my calling.”

— Holly Black