Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

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

— Holly Black

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

356. “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

357. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

360. “So it’s not as bad as it looks?” Call ventured. “Oh, no,” she told him. “It’s just as bad as it looks. But I’m very, very good at my job.”

— Holly Black

361. “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

362. “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

363. “Everything was strange and beautiful and swollen with possibilities.”

— Holly Black

364. “I forbid you from speaking aloud about your service to me. I forbid you from putting it into writing or into song. You will never tell anyone of the Roach. You will never tell anyone of any of my spies. You will never reveal their secrets, their meeting places, their safe houses. So long as I live, you will obey this.”

— Holly Black

365. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

368. “I can learn to live with guilt. I don’t care about being good.”

— Holly Black

369. “I liked you, you know,” he says. “I like you still.” For a moment, I wonder what would happen if I hauled off and punched him.”

— Holly Black

370. “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

371. “Call wasn’t sure what it meant that he’d gone full Evil Overlord on Jasper but still couldn’t manage to impress him.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

373. “Nothing can happen more beautiful than death – Walt Whitman.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

376. “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

377. “You are the best kind of killer, Cassel Sharpe, the kind that never has blood on his hands. The kind that never has to sicken at the sight of what he’s done, or come to like it too much.”

— Holly Black

378. “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

379. “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

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

— Holly Black

381. “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

382. “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

383. “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

384. “There had been plenty of books and films romanticizing vampires over the last century. It was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.”

— Holly Black

385. “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

386. “The job is not to get caught.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

388. “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

389. “Death’s favorites don’t die.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

394. “Holy moly. – Jasper.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

396. “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

397. “Hazel kissed boys for all kinds of reasons – because they were cute, because she was a little drunk, because she was bored, because they let her, because it was fun, because they looked lonely, because it blotted out her fears for a while, because she wasn’t sure how many kisses she had left.”

— Holly Black

398. “No fire at all.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

400. “Quests are supposed to change us.”

— Holly Black