Holly Black Quotes

You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don't know who I am at all. And either way I'm not happy. ~ Holly Black

I thought you were her knight, but you have become only her woodsman
taking little girls into the forest to cut out their hearts. ~ Holly Black

I am used to girls screaming, and your screams- your screams will be sweeter than another's cries of love. ~ Holly Black

I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things. ~ Holly Black

But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself. ~ Holly Black

I think you impressed him with the sheer force of your stupidity. ~ Holly Black

There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she'll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. ~ Holly Black

Once, there was a girl who found a sword in the woods. Once, there was a girl who made a bargain with the Folk. Once, there was a girl who'd been a knight in the service of a monster. Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself. Once, there was a girl ... Hazel ~ Holly Black

It was a vow, a piece of a chant, their scripture, something they took so seriously that saying it aloud embarrassed them. ~ Holly Black

Can you really cook meth in a hotel coffeepot?" - Cassel
"Sure," Jones says, looking into his cup thoughtfully.
Guess Mom was right about one thing. ~ Holly Black

I think there's a reason that horror appeals to teens. There's a lot of useful lessons to take away from reading horror. We get to be scared in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can put the book down if we get too scared, and no one will ever know if we decide not to pick it up again. ~ Holly Black

Moments before she planted a massive kiss right on his mouth. Call's eyes went wide. Hers were closed as she leaned into him. They stood like that for a moment. Call was aware that people were staring at them - Tamara looking shocked, and Aaron, standing near her, started to laugh. Call was pretty sure Aaron was laughing at the fact that Call, having no idea where to put his hands, was waving his arms around like a squid underwater. ~ Holly Black

I would remain nearer you for what time there is."
"Gone in one faerie sigh," she quoted.
Leather-clad fingers brushed over her short hair, rested on her cheek. "I can hold my breath. ~ Holly Black

She didn't want to explain the recklessness, the pleasure of making the bad choice, the glory of at least this once, picking her own path to damnation. ~ Holly Black

If one of the people who'd gone Cold drank human blood, the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised them back up again, Colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever. ~ Holly Black

But in all the stories, you have a single chance; and if you miss it, then it's gone. The door isn't there when you go back to look. There is no second invitation to the ball. This is my chance. ~ Holly Black

Tell them I'm like you," Gavriel said as they began to slow down.
Aidan laughed. "I think they can see you're not like us anymore."
"No," he said. "Tell them you know me. That I'm like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them."
"Wait," said Winter. "Wait. Is he saying he wasn't at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a vampire?"
Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. "You know me," he said, and a chill went up Tana's spine. "You've known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face."
"What does he mean?" Midnight asked.
"I don't know," Winter said in an odd voice. "Nothing. ~ Holly Black

I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don't know how to be this kind of villain. ~ Holly Black

Kaye groaned. "You really are a terrible boyfriend, you know that?"
He nodded. "A surfeit of ballads makes for odd ideas about romance. ~ Holly Black

Well fine, then. I could send you out to win my favor. Possibly on a quest involving bringing a large mug of coffee and a doughnut. Or the wholesale slaughter of all my enemies. I haven't decided which. ~ Holly Black

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

Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically
an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be?
Seriously, what else could go wrong? ~ Holly Black

'Twilight' passed like a fever through the sophisticated reader and the unsophisticated reader alike. People devoured those books in single sittings, over weekends, with a kind of raw intensity that is rare. ~ Holly Black

Lucien," Gavriel said, "if you're proposing a duel, I believe she gets to pick the weapon. I hope she picks me. ~ Holly Black

'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.' ~ Holly Black

One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it. ~ Holly Black

Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them. ~ Holly Black

You in trouble? Sam asks. The way he says it, I wonder if he's thinking about how to get out of here if I am. ~ Holly Black

Come be angry at a nearer distance ~ Holly Black

The odd thing about ambition is this: You can acquire it like a fever, but it is not so easy to shed. ~ Holly Black

It was as if whatever demon possessed them, whatever force kept their corpses from the grave, had refined them in the blaze of its power, burning away their humanity to reveal something finer. ~ Holly Black

Faeries…?" I ask.

"Yes, yes." He sounds impatient. "The Folk of the Air. Insubstantial, unable to hold one shape. Like the seeds of flowers launched into the sky. ~ Holly Black

She wanted to tell him about Valentina and how she had to go, how she'd promised she's help, and how she would help, except that right then she didn't want to help anyone so much as to kiss him and maybe bite him again, too, but mostly kiss him and do all the things that came after kissing. ~ Holly Black

You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it. ~ Holly Black

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys. ~ Holly Black

We may not die from age, but we grow weary with it. ~ Holly Black

There's no way out," she reminded herself. "There's only what you do before you die. ~ Holly Black

Do not touch her
A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgment on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don't even have the strength to fight back.
Whatever can you mean? Randalin says. She's -----
She is my wife, Cardan says ~ Holly Black

After every battle, he ritually dips his hood into the blood of his enemies. I've seen the hood, kept under glass in the armory. The fabric is stiff and stained a brown so deep it's almost black, except for a few smears of green.
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

Show your power by appearing powerless. ~ Holly Black

He looks at me and blinks, as through a fog. "This is an absolutely terrible idea," he says with a kind of amazement in his voice.

"Yes," I tell him, kicking off my boots.


-Cardan and Jude ~ Holly Black

I concentrate on what I am going to say to Vivi, instead of thinking of Cardan. I do not want to consider what happened between us. I do not want to think about the way his muscles moved or how his skin felt or the soft gasping sounds he made or the slide of his mouth against mine.

I definitely don't want to think about how hard I had to bite my own lip to keep quiet. Or how obvious it was that I'd never done any of the things we did, no less the things we didn't do. ~ Holly Black

You don't have to protect these people, Cassel. I am these people. ~ Holly Black

Flattery will get you everywhere," Sam says, "Except, apparently, off a roof. ~ Holly Black

I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron's house. I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen.
Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster's. ~ Holly Black

Every hero is the villain of his own story. ~ Holly Black

I think there are a lot of really positive aspects to social media for novelists. Even though our work is pretty solitary, through Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram and blogging in general, we're better able to connect directly with readers. ~ Holly Black

All power is cursed," I say. "The most terrible among us will do anything to get it, and those who'd wield power best don't want it thrust upon them. But that doesn't mean they can avoid their responsibilities forever. ~ Holly Black

You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"
He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but ... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."
Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"
He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.
And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.
You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."
She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep ~ Holly Black

What do you think he did to me to deserve to die?" I ask.

He stokes the fire. Sparks fly up. "I assumed he broke your heart. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart. ~ Holly Black

FULL MOON IS IN THREE DAYS TIME. COME TO THE REVEL. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO RHYME. ~ Holly Black

He thinks of Elienad, lying beneath tables, listening to the inflections of lies. Watching the hesitations, the gestures, the tensed muscles. Learning a language the king was unaware he even spoke. ~ Holly Black

Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too. ~ Holly Black

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. ~ Holly Black

She's an old lady," Barron says. "And she's been locked up for years. Let her have some fun. She needs to blow off steam. Seduce old dudes. Lose money at canasta. ~ Holly Black

I don't lie," I lied. ~ Holly Black

Jack looked surprised when she stumbled upon him, which was odd, because he was almost never caught off guard. As his mother once said about him, Jack could hear the thunder before the lightning bothered to strike. ~ Holly Black

I don't desire to do as well in the tournament as one of the fey. I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them. ~ Holly Black

She turned to me, head titled, her expression pure confusion. As though I had no reason to be afraid of a broken heart. She had no idea how dangerous a broken heart could be. You do, though. You know. ~ Holly Black

Just because I am bitter about romance doesn't mean everyone else needs to be. ~ Holly Black

The basement smelled damp, like mold and minerals, as she started down the creaking, wooden stairs. Her mother had stopped screaming the moment the door opened. Everything was very quiet as Tana descended, the scratch of her shoes on the wood loud in her ears. Her foot hesitated on the last step. Then something knocked her down. ~ Holly Black

And if I wanted to kill myself, I wouldn't throw myself off a roof. And if I was going to throw myself off a roof, I would put on some pants before I did it. ~ Holly Black

She goes through this world as of nothing touches her, as if no one can reach her, as though she's focused on something bigger and better and more important that she's not going to tell you a single thing about. It charms them. ~ Holly Black

He hates you, even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you all the more for it. ~ Holly Black

how am I supposed to be worse than the folk ? ~ Holly Black

Fairy tales have a moral: Stay on the path. Don't trust wolves. Don't steal things, not even things you think no normal person would care about. Share your food but don't trust people who want to share their good with you; don't eat their shiny red apples, not their candy houses, nor any of it. Be nice, always nice, and polite to everyone: kings and beggars, witches and wounded bears. Don't break a promise. ~ Holly Black

She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for. ~ Holly Black

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. ~ Holly Black

I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING. ~ Holly Black

Poppy used to share the room with her older sister, and piles of he sister's outgrown clothes still remained spread out in drifts, along with a collection of used makeup and notebooks covered in stickers and scrawled with lyrics. A jumbled of her sister's old Barbies were on top of a bookshelf, waiting for Poppy to try and fix their melted arms and chopped hair. The bookshelves were overflowing with fantasy paperbacks and overdue library books, some of them on Greek myths, some on mermaids, and a few on local hauntings. The walls were covered in posters-Doctor Who, a cat in a bowler hat, and a giant map of Narnia. ~ Holly Black

I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,] it was really helpful to think about the way you can use language. When you're writing about faeries, you can't call anyone "fey"; there are certain words that become forbidden because they're actualized in what faeries do. When you write about vampires, you could think the same way about things like the word "red" or "hunger"
it's interesting to think of the ways that the words have double meanings, or different meanings that shifted. ~ Holly Black

His uniform sleeve was burned away and his arm seemed to be glowing from the inside, like a piece of kindling in a fire.
Fire wants to burn, Call thought. ~ Holly Black

Believe what you can handle believing ~ Holly Black

All boys lie," Ben said. "And all girls lie,too. I lie. You lie. Don't pretend you don't. ~ Holly Black

You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only thing I chose for myself. The only thing I want. ~ Holly Black

If there is nothing but this;" Roiben said. "If we are to be shadows, changeless and forgotten, we will have to dine on these memories for the rest of our days. Don't you want a few more moments to chew over? ~ Holly Black

You better have kissed him! You better have kissed him so hard that he just about choked on your tongue. And if not, you better go kiss him like that right now. ~ Holly Black

When we turn,is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released? ~ Holly Black

I am hungry. I realize, but I feel too sick to eat. Is this what it is to be brokenhearted? I am not sure it is Locke I am sick over, so much as the world the way it was before the coronation began. But if I could undo the passing of the days, why not unwind them to before I killed Valerian, why not unwind them until my parents are alive, why not unwind them all the way to the beginning? ~ Holly Black

I roll my eyes, and he gives me a quick grin. And my heart hurts a little because we are all together and safe, and it wasn't something I'd known how to want. And Cardan looks a little shy in the face of all this happiness, ~ Holly Black

As Val jumped down onto the litter-strewn concrete after them, she thought how insane it was to follow two people she didn't know into the bowels of the subway, but instead of being afraid, she felt glad. She would make all her own decisions now, even if they were ruinous ones. It was the same pleasurable feeling as tearing a piece of paper into tiny, tiny pieces. ~ Holly Black

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

You could still be lying," says the Roach. He turns to Cardan. "Try her."

"Your pardon?" Cardan says, drawing himself up, and the Roach seems to suddenly remember to whom he's speaking in such an offhanded way.

"Don't be such a prickly rose, Your Majesty," the Roach says with a shrug and a grin. "I'm not giving you an order. I'm suggesting that if you tried to glamour Jude, we could find out the truth."

Cardan sighs and walks toward me. I know this is necessary. I know that he doesn't intend to hurt me. I know he can't glamour me. And yet I draw back automatically.

"Jude?" he asks.

"Go ahead," I say.

I hear the glamour enter his voice, heady and seductive and more powerful than I expected. "Crawl to me," he says with a grin. Embarrassment pinks my cheeks.

I stay where I am, looking at all their faces. "Satisfied?"

The Bomb nods. "You're not charmed. ~ Holly Black

I'm afraid that whatever I touch is spoilt by the contact."
"I'm not scared of being spoiled," Val said. ~ Holly Black

I know that in Faerie, children are rare and precious and all that, but in the mortal world, there's such a thing as abortion," Vivi says. "And even here, there are changelings."

"And adoption," Heather puts in. "It's your decision. No one would judge you."

"If they did, I could cut off their hands," I volunteer. ~ Holly Black

No," said Luis, "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court."
"Well, I'm not, he dumped me."
"You can't get dumped by the lord of the night court."
"Oh, yes, you can. You so completely can. ~ Holly Black

I kissed him on the mouth, and then I threatened to kiss him some more if he didn't do exactly what I wanted. ~ Holly Black

I need your help, says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila's, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk. ~ Holly Black

Haven't you watched the feeds?" Winter asked her, more gently. "Vampires like anything and everything that keeps them from getting bored. Anything and everything." ~ Holly Black

That's family for you. Can't live with them, can't murder them. ~ Holly Black

This is the part in the movie where that guy says, "Zombies? What zombies?" just before they eat his brains. I don't want to be that guy. ~ Holly Black

There's nothing quite as funny as someone else's misery - Cassel Sharpe ~ Holly Black

And as the whiskey sang through her blood and sweat slicked her skin, a dangerously familiar recklessness filled her. ~ Holly Black

This house feels unfamiliar and disturbingly full of possibilities. ~ Holly Black

Every plan is a house of cards. ~ Holly Black

She knew she shouldn't feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own. ~ Holly Black

Sam frowns at me, suddenly serious. "You know, I thought--for most of the first year we lived together--that you were going to kill me."

That makes me nearly spit out beer, I laugh so hard.

"No, look--living with you, it's like knowing there's a loaded gun on the other side of the room. You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat."

That only makes me laugh harder.

"Shut up," he says. "You might do normal stuff, but a leopard can drink milk or fall off things like a house cat. It's obvious you're not--not like the rest of us. I'll look over at you, and you'll be flexing your claws, or I don't know, eating a freshly killed antelope."

"Oh," I say. It's a ridiculous metaphor, but the hilarity has gone out of me. I thought I did a good job of fitting in--maybe not perfect, but not as bad as Sam makes it sound.

"It's like Audrey," he says, stabbing the air with a finger clearly well on his way to inebriated and full of determination to make me understand his theory. "You acted like she went out with you because you did this good job of being a nice guy."

"I am a nice guy."

I try to be.

Sam snorts. "She liked you because you scared her. And then you scared her too much. ~ Holly Black

Changing is what people do when they have no options left. ~ Holly Black

Don't be drinking the Haterade. ~ Holly Black

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