Quotes from Holly Black

I like all the things that make you monstrous.

You think I don't deserve him," I say to Cardan. He smiles slowly, like the moon slipping beneath the waves of the lake. "Oh no, I think you're perfect for each other.

Balekin and Orlagh are planning your murder," I say flustered. "Yes," he says lazily. "So why did I wake at all?

Love is stupid. All we do is break one another's hearts.

Remember that I'm still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won't let you out.

Every day that I don't beg Cardan for forgiveness over a feud he started is a day I win. He can humiliate me, but every time he does and I don't back down, he makes himself less powerful. After all, he's throwing everything he's got at someone as weak as I am and it's not working. He's going to take himself down.

I want to have some reaction. I want to tremble or feel nauseated. I want to be the person who begins to weep. I want to be anyone but the person I am, who looks around to be sure no one saw, who wipes off my knife in the dirt, wipes off my hand on his clothes, and gets out of there before the guards come.

I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven't been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I've been fighting my own shadow.

I can walk into someone's house, kiss their wife, sit down at their table, and eat their dinner. I can lift a passport at an airport, and in twenty minutes it will seem like it's mine. I can be a blackbird staring in the window. I can be a cat creeping along a ledge. I can go anywhere I want and do the worst things I can imagine, with nothing to ever connect me to those crimes. Today I look like me, but tomorrow I could look like you. I could be you.

I thought I was playing the game of pissing off people who hated me already and eating the consequences.

Being infected, being a vampire, it' s always you. Maybe it' s more you than ever before. It' s you as you always were, deep down inside.

They say that nameless things change constantly -that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn't quite real either.

After all, who wants to die slowly when you can die fast? Me.

I left mad behind a long time ago. The world it is the way it is.I can only fix my little piece of it

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

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be

But what if I actually am becoming besotted with him? Cardan is more knowledgeable than I am at love. He could use that against me, just as I asked him to use it against Nicasia. Perhaps he found a way to turn the tables after all. Kill him, a part of me says, a part I remember from the night I took him captive. Kill him before he makes you love him.

You better get over here with my car," Grandad says. "Before I call the cops and tell them you stole it." "Sorry," I say contritely. Then the rest of what he said sinks in and I laugh. "Wait, did you just threaten me with calling the police? Because that I'd like to see.

They think you can't feel anything, because they've forgotten how. You're very, very dangerous, I get that, and you're prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don't let yourself mistake that for some kind of inner corruption. They see themselves in you and are blinded.

Magic is seldom so convenient as to conform to our preferences.

The Folk adore Cardan, and they're terrified of my sister, two excellent things. I hope they rule Elfhame for a years and then pass it down to one of a dozen offspring. No need for me to be involved.

I can't believe he said that and then just walked out, leaving me reeling. I am going to STRANGLE him.

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.

You're awful." He said it as though he was delighted. "And the worst part is that you believe otherwise.