Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

404. “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

405. “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

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

— Holly Black

407. “I was a fool”, I say, because i might as well admit it. ” I gave up the bird in my hand for two in the bush.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

410. “Quests are supposed to change us.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

412. “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

413. “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. The memory of his mouth on mine shimmers in the air between us.”

— Holly Black

414. “Looking back, Val knew she had a habit of trusting too much, being too passive, too willing to believe the best of others and the worst of herself.”

— Holly Black

415. “His mouth curls into a smile. His eyes shine with wicked intent. “Look at them all, your subjects. A shame not a one knows who their true ruler is.”

— Holly Black

416. “I don’t know,” Call said. He was starting to worry that there weren’t any good guys. Just people with longer or shorter Evil Overlord lists.”

— Holly Black

417. “I hope Cardan misses me.”

— Holly Black

418. “We have about three hours of homework a night, and our evening study period is only two hours, so if you want to spend the break at half-past-nine not freaking out, you have to cram. I’m not sure that the picture of the wide-eyed zombie girl biting out the brains of senior douchebag James Page is part of Sam’s homework, bit if it is, his physics teacher is awesome.”

— Holly Black

419. “What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I’m not?”

— Holly Black

420. “His song began to change. It grew softer, sweeter, like the morning after a long cry, when your head still hurt but your heart was no longer broken.”

— Holly Black

421. “He just looked like a pretty boy, tall and lanky. She thought again of the crumpled paper in her purse and of him, caged beneath a cemetery. How long had he been there? How long had he looked just as he did now? A hundred years? Two hundred? Could he even remember the press of time? Maybe having stepped outside of it would drive anybody crazy.”

— Holly Black

422. “It turned our that no matter how far you fall, there’s always a lower place.”

— Holly Black

423. “We’re not going to be fine, Tana. We’re never going to be fine ever again.”

— Holly Black

424. “If you don’t know why you’re apologizing, your apology probably sucks.”

— Holly Black

425. “She fell asleep like a flame being extinguished.”

— Holly Black

426. “Just because I am bitter about romance doesn’t mean everyone else needs to be.”

— Holly Black

427. “They looked absurdly gorgeous, glowing from the television like fallen angels. Even from the beginning, that was a problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”

— Holly Black

428. “Scared, silly-scared, scared, scared, scared,” Lutie chanted against her neck.”

— Holly Black

429. “You’re a good little murderer, Dulcamara said.”

— Holly Black

430. “Air all around him, there was air in the water, all elements were one, fire and earth, air and water. All are but one thing, not four, not two, and not three, but one. He.”

— Holly Black

431. “My head is pounding. I wish the mints were aspirin.”

— Holly Black

432. “She should tell him no, but instead she seemed to be running toward trouble, leaving no stone unturned, no boy unkissed, no crush abandoned, and no bad idea unembraced.”

— Holly Black

433. “Now that I’ve started touching her, I can’t seem to stop. Like somehow the language of my hands will tell her all the things I don’t know how to say out loud.”

— Holly Black

434. “She came out of sleep like a thunderclap – waking from dreams so deep and dark that she couldn’t remember anything but dirt and hands pulling her down into graves with cities inside them.”

— Holly Black

435. “The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended.”

— Holly Black

436. “For a moment, Cardan just stares at me with stupid, crow-black eyes. Then one corner of his mouth curls. “Oh,” he says. “You’re going to regret doing that.”

— Holly Black

437. “Then, once the window was open, it would have been easy to forget to close it. There was still the garlic, after all, still the holy water on the lintels. Things like this happened in Europe, in places like Belgium, where the streets teemed with vampires and the shops didn’t open until after dark. Not here. Not in Tana’s town, where there hadn’t been a single attack in more than five years.”

— Holly Black

438. “Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.”

— Holly Black

439. “His voice had a faint trace of an accent she couldn’t place – one that made her pretty sure he was no local kid infected the night before.”

— Holly Black

440. “If you stop,” she says, “I will also kill you.”

— Holly Black

441. “It occurs to me that maybe desire isn’t something overindulging helps. Maybe it is not unlike mithridatism; maybe I took a killing dose when I should have been poisoning myself slowly, one kiss at a time.”

— Holly Black

442. “Little brother,” Balekin says without waiting to be acknowledged. He wears the chained cuffs on his wrists as though they are bracelets, as though they add to his status instead of marking him as a prisoner.”

— Holly Black

443. “It is my belief that books are living things.”

— Holly Black

444. “Magic is seldom so convenient as to conform to our preferences.”

— Holly Black

445. “I will repay him, although it seems I will have much to repay him for. I will make him proud of me. Everyone else, I will make very, very sorry.”

— Holly Black

446. “Automotones, escaped.”

— Holly Black

447. “Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke. “You are more dangerous than daybreak.”

— Holly Black

448. “I had a tutor who wanted me to believe that mercy is a kind of sorrow and that since evil is the motive of sorrow, evil is also the motive of mercy. I thought that my tutor was old and cruel, and maybe he was – but now I think he was also right.”

— Holly Black

449. “You and your sister are very dear to each other. To show your regard, you give each other lovely bouquets of lies.”

— Holly Black

450. “I think we should consider our roles as monarchs to be largely decorative. It would be better for the low Courts and the solitary Folk to work things out on their own.”

— Holly Black