Quotes from Holly Black

I'm afraid my voice is going to break. I am afraid she is going to hear how much this hurts.

You love him, too, I think. You've loved him since before you were a prisoner of the Undersea. You loved him when you agreed to marry him. Once this is over, I will find the bravery to tell him.

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.

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted. And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming. But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.

And elsewhere in the woods, there is another party, one taking place inside a hollow hill, full of night-blooming flowers. There, a pale boy plays a fiddle with newly mended fingers while his sister dances with his best friend. There, a monster whirls about, branches waving in time with the music, There, a prince of the Folk takes up the mantle of king, embracing a changeling like a bother, and, with a human boy at his side, names a girl his champion.

It's the flaw that brings out the beauty.

I don't lie," I lied.

Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con.

He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.

It's funny how you get under his skin." At first, I'm not sure I heard him right. I almost ask whom he's talking about, because I can't quite believe he's admitting that high and mighty Cardan is affected by anything. "Like a splinter?" I say. "Of iron. No one else bothers him quite the way that you do.

I would settle for even his worst self, his cruelest trickster self, if only he could be here." -Jude Duarte

Life is like licking Honey from a Thorn

He looks every inch a spy from the Court of Shadows, down to the sneaky smile pulling at the corner of his beautiful mouth.

Can't get away from your own self.

Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

If wishes were horses , my mortal father used to say, beggars would ride .

What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I'm not?

I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,' Cardan returns.

And if the serpent grows in monstrousness and corruption, if it poisons the land of Elfhame itself, then let me be the queen of monsters. Let me rule over that blackened land with my redcap father as a puppet by my side. Let me be feared and never again afraid.

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?

I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying.

I haul around and slap him. It's a stinging blow, smearing the gold on his cheekbone and causing his skin to redden. We stare at each other for long moments, breathing hard. His eyes are bright with something entirely different from anger. I am in over my head. I am drowning.

We got it." Val grinned and lifted her fist. "Wonder twin powers activate!" Ruth grinned back, knocking her fist into Val's. "Shape of two fucking lunatics.

If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely you should be friend to my friend.