Top 500 Holly Black Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “He had green eyes so clear and bright that they made you think of poisonous drinks or maybe mouthwash.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

403. “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

404. “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

405. “Quests are supposed to change us.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

407. “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

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

— Holly Black

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

414. “Secrets lie in the entrails of things, in the dregs.”

— Holly Black

415. “I think of Madoc, dozing away upstairs, all his dreams of murder. I think of Oriana and Oak being forced apart for years. I think of Cardan and how he will hate me. I think of what it means to make myself the villain of the piece. “For the next full minute, I command you not to move,” I whisper back.”

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

422. “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

423. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

426. “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

427. “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

428. “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

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

— Holly Black

430. “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

431. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

434. “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

435. “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

436. “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

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

— Holly Black

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

— Holly Black

439. “Automotones, escaped.”

— Holly Black

440. “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

441. “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

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

— Holly Black

443. “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

444. “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

445. “Call stroked his head. Alex laughed. “Stupid animal.” Tamara bristled. “Don’t talk about Havoc that way.” “Who says I was talking about Havoc?”

— Holly Black

446. “Dead or not, I have come for his heart and I will have it.”

— Holly Black

447. “Yeah, the whole family knows. It’s no big deal. One night at dinner I said, ‘Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.’ It was easier for her to understand that way.”

— Holly Black

448. “One night you will ask me for something I cannot give.”

— Holly Black

449. “I hope Cardan misses me.”

— Holly Black

450. “And if it stings a little that he admires me primarily for my ruthlessness, well, I suppose there should be some comfort that he admires me at all.”

— Holly Black