Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “In general, her family wasn’t very good at talking about important stuff. And of all of them, she was the least good at it. When she tried, it felt like all the chains on all her imagined safes and trunks started rattling.”

— Holly Black

352. “I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.”

— Holly Black

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

356. “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

357. “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

358. “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

359. “Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.”

— Holly Black

360. “Protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn’t the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”

— Holly Black

361. “Death’s favorites don’t die.”

— Holly Black

362. “No amount of takeout Chinese food or politeness ought to make me forget exactly who and what I am dealing with.”

— Holly Black

363. “I envy what I fear and hate what I envy.”

— Holly Black

364. “There’s nothing like a gunshot to make you the life of the party.”

— Holly Black

365. “Holy moly. – Jasper.”

— Holly Black

366. “The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.”

— Holly Black

367. “The job is not to get caught.”

— Holly Black

368. “Do you seek out peril? One would think that years of being a mortal would have made you more aware of mortality.”

— Holly Black

369. “The problem with coming through something terrible and big is that afterward, you’re left feeling all the feelings that you shoved down and pushed away. For many long days, I have been terrified, and now, when I ought to be feeling great, what i want to do is hide under a table in the brugh with Cardan until i can finally convince myself he’s all right.”

— Holly Black

370. “No fire at all.”

— Holly Black

371. “He attacks again, his sword a silvery fish darting through the sea of the night.”

— Holly Black

372. “And now she was sixteen and felt like she had no imagination left.”

— Holly Black

373. “I miss him, and the pain of it is a yawning chasm, one into which I yearn to let myself fall.”

— Holly Black

374. “It turns out that having kissed someone, the possibility of kissing hangs over everything, no matter how terrible an idea it was the first time.”

— Holly Black

375. “She loved him so much, that it already hurt. It already felt like he’d broken her heart.”

— Holly Black

376. “They loved him because he was a prince and a faerie and magical and you were supposed to love princes and faeries and magical people.”

— Holly Black

377. “Sometimes I go down and stare at it, trying to see my parents in the tide lines of dried blood. I want to feel something, something besides a vague queasiness. I want to feel more, but every time I look at it, I feel less.”

— Holly Black

378. “For what we want most, we will take almost any chance.”

— Holly Black

379. “Really it was a pretty good talk. About the best I could expect from my sociopath amnesiac jerk of an older brother.”

— Holly Black

380. “Do you know what makes people love one another? Well, no one else does, either. But scientists study it, and there’s all this bizarre stuff about pheromones and facial symmetry and the circumstances under which you first met. People are weird. Our bodies are weird. Maybe I can’t help being attracted to her the same way flies can’t help being attracted to carnivorous plants.”

— Holly Black

381. “Lords and ladies who walk unseen, lords and ladies all in green, three times I stamp upon the earth... ” Hazel hesitated and then gave the only reason she could think of why the Folk might grant her entry to their revel.“Let me in for the sake of mirth.”

— Holly Black

382. “Librarians are hot. They have knowledge and power over their domain... It is no coincidence how many librarians are portrayed as having a passionate interior, hidden by a cool layer of reserve. Aren’t books like that? On the shelf, their calm covers belie the intense experience of reading one. Reading inflames the soul. Now, what sort of person would be the keeper of such books?”

— Holly Black

383. “He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”

— Holly Black

384. “Now, if anyone in the Refectory bothers you, you can chop off their head, Aaron thought cheerfully.”

— Holly Black

385. “When it’s done, we’ll be like brothers,” said the devil. “I already have a brother,” Gavriel slurred. “He’s dead.” The devil loomed over him, his grin widening to show off sharp teeth. “As am I.” Gavriel opened his mouth to shout, but drunk as he was, he began to laugh instead.”

— Holly Black

386. “Madoc described fighting as a lot of things, as a game of strategy played at speed, as a dance, but right now it feels like a argument. Like an argument where she’s keeping me too busy defending myself to score any points.”

— Holly Black

387. “Remember what your father said about magic, boy. It’ll cost you everything.”

— Holly Black

388. “It was a voice so full of emotion that it sounded like no emotion at all.”

— Holly Black

389. “Then Ivan and Marya Morevna built a pyre and burned Koschei until he was ash. And then they lived happily, visiting each of Ivan’s sisters and their bird-husbands, all of whom declared that Ivan did the right thing to risk so much for a woman as beautiful and fierce as Marya Morevna.” “If she was so fierce, how come she didn’t just save herself?” Tana asked.”

— Holly Black

390. “I think you impressed him with the sheer force of your stupidity.”

— Holly Black

391. “When I met Eldred, he rode up on a milk-white steed, and all the imaginings of my life were as dust and ashes.”

— Holly Black

392. “We all have things inside ourselves we can’t kill,′ I say, not sure which part of me would be better off dead: this monster self, or the normal one who wants nothing more than a little place on a little planet with his friends, the one who will have to live with being a killer.”

— Holly Black

393. “He had green eyes so clear and bright that they made you think of poisonous drinks or maybe mouthwash.”

— Holly Black

394. “Perhaps you could just allow yourself to be rescued,” Cardan says. “For once.”

— Holly Black

395. “Instead, I try to imagine someone she might fall in love with. Maybe it will be a merrow, and he will give her the gift of breathing underwater and a crown of pearls and take her to his bed under the sea. Actually, that sounds amazing. Maybe I am making all the wrong choices.”

— Holly Black

396. “A second book that makes you rethink the first book is the Holy Grail of a series.”

— Holly Black

397. “I’m Lila, and yes, he’s crazy. But you must have noticed that before now. He was crazy back when I knew him, and he’s obviously gotten crazier over time.”

— Holly Black

398. “This house feels unfamiliar and disturbingly full of possibilities.”

— Holly Black

399. “Tamara gave Jasper a long, considering look. Then she picked up her bowl of pudding and turned it upside down on top of his head. Purple goop ran down his face. He yelped in surprise.”

— Holly Black

400. “Quests are supposed to change us.”

— Holly Black