Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Princess Elowyn whirls at the center of a circle of Larks. Her skin is a glittering gold, her hair the deep green of ivy. Beside her, a human boy plays the fiddle. Two more mortals accompany him less skillfully, but more joyfully, on ukuleles.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

303. “Ah! A lady of mystery! My very favorite kind.”

— Holly Black

304. “Do you ever feel so angry that you think you could devour the whole world and still not be satisfied?”

— Holly Black

305. “I still feel the warm pressure of his fingers against my skin. Something is really wrong with me, to want what I hate, to want someone who despises me, even if he wants me, too. My only comfort is that he doesn’t know what I feel.”

— Holly Black

306. “It is my belief that books are living things... And as living things, they need to be protected.”

— Holly Black

307. “We slept on mattresses stuffed with the soft seed-heads of dandelions.”

— Holly Black

308. “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

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

— Holly Black

310. “He looks every inch a spy from the Court of Shadows, down to the sneaky smile pulling at the corner of his beautiful mouth.”

— Holly Black

311. “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones.”

— Holly Black

312. “They ran through the night together in a darkling fairy tale of blood and forests and snow, of girls with raven’s wing hair and rose-red lips and sharp teeth as white as milk.”

— Holly Black

313. “I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they trash in your hands as though with an excess of passion.”

— Holly Black

314. “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

315. “He would make out with girls in front of her. He would make out with boys in front of her. He would wink at her from across rooms, daring her to criticize him.”

— Holly Black

316. “It will hurt. Pain makes you strong.”

— Holly Black

317. “I wanted to be in love like in the storybooks and songs and ballads. Love that hits you like a lightning bolt. And I’m sorry, because yeah, I get that you think I’m ridiculous. I get that you think I’m hilarious. I know, I get that you’re mocking me. I get how stupid I am, but at least I know.”

— Holly Black

318. “I know I shouldn’t love it as I do, stolen as I am from the mortal world, my parents murdered. But I love it all the same.”

— Holly Black

319. “Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.”

— Holly Black

320. “Let me look out for you. Let your enemies become mine.”

— Holly Black

321. “A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame’s future is written. Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper... When he becomes drunk, his subjects becomes tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow.”

— Holly Black

322. “If she was going to die, she might as well die sarcastic. She’d seen a lot of old movies, and that was definitely the way to go out.”

— Holly Black

323. “Some things exist whether you believe in them or not.”

— Holly Black

324. “You’re going to get all the things you think you can’t have,” she says quietly, reaching out to rub red lipstick from my cheek. “You just don’t know it yet.”

— Holly Black

325. “He knew what he was, what depths of depravity and cruelty he had plumbed, what ambitions drove him. He prided himself on knowing those things – but that didn’t mean he needed anyone else to see them as well.”

— Holly Black

326. “Las tormentas son menos volubles de lo que son, los mares menos caprichosos.”

— Holly Black

327. “Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I’m a slug.”

— Holly Black

328. “To Ben, love was the flame in which he wanted to be reborn. He wanted to be remade by it.”

— Holly Black

329. “You whom I could not save Listen to me.” – CZESLAW MILOSZ, “Dedication.”

— Holly Black

330. “I hereafter exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world until such time as she is pardoned by the crown. Until then, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”

— Holly Black

331. “A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings.”

— Holly Black

332. “But if you didn’t believe in monsters, then how were you going to be able to keep safe from them?”

— Holly Black

333. “People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.”

— Holly Black

334. “Yeah, Cardan should definitely trust you more. You seem really trustworthy. It’s not like you’re actually currently betraying him.”

— Holly Black

335. “Everyone danced – sweaty bodies packed tight, drunk with sound.”

— Holly Black

336. “The Alkahest is gone. If he’s the one who got it, they’re not going to bother with prison. He’ll be dead as soon as they find him.”

— Holly Black

337. “He continues looking at me in this strange way, as though he’s never seen me before or as though he thought he might never see me again.”

— Holly Black

338. “It’s the thrill of leaping without being able to see the ground below you, right before you realise that’s called falling.”

— Holly Black

339. “Oh, God, Call thought. Tamara’s father. And he’d just kissed Tamara. Was that why Mr. Rajavi was here? Don’t be totally ridiculous, said Aaron. Do you think he’s psychic or something? Kimiya was grounded for making out with Evil Overlord Alex – Tamara had said so. Mr. Rajavi had a well-established policy of not liking his children making out with Evil Overlords.”

— Holly Black

340. “There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery – Cassel Sharpe.”

— Holly Black

341. “We all want stupid things. That doesn’t mean we should have them.”

— Holly Black

342. “I thought you needed to be tougher. But I’ve been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn’t the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”

— Holly Black

343. “Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.”

— Holly Black

344. “Her tragedy, if she had one, was to be as normal and average as any child ever born.”

— Holly Black

345. “Val and Ruth had been friends forever, for so long that Val was used to being the overshadowed one, the “normal” one, the one who set up the witty one-liners, not the one who delivered them. She liked that role; it made her feel safe. Robin to Ruth’s Batman. Chewbaca to her Han Solo.”

— Holly Black

346. “But vows should never be to a crown. They should be to a ruler. And they should be of your own free will. I am your king, and beside me stands my queen. But it is your choice whether or not to follow us. Your will shall be your own.”

— Holly Black

347. “Cardan looks at me as though he’s never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.”

— Holly Black

348. “Fairy tales are full of girls who wait, who endure, who suffer. Good girls. Obedient girls. Girls who crush nettles until their hands bleed. Girls who haul water for witches. Girls who wander through deserts or sleep in ashes or make homes for transformed brothers in the woods. Girls without hands, without eyes, without the power of speech, without any power at all. But then a prince rides up and sees the girl and finds her beautiful. Beautiful, not despite her suffering, but because of it.”

— Holly Black

349. “I don’t imagine myself back in a life like theirs; what I imagine is going over there and scaring them until they cry. I would never, of course. I mean, I don’t think I would.”

— Holly Black

350. “I can feel the moment he gives in and gives up, pulling me to him despite the threat of the knife. He kisses me hard, with a kind of devouring desperation, fingers digging into my hair. Our mouths slide together, teeth over lips over tongues. Desire hits me like a kick to the stomach. It’s like fighting, except what we’re fighting for is to crawl inside each other’s skin.”

— Holly Black