Quotes from Holly Black

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone's watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he's actually sawing a girl in half. You think he's doing one trick when he's actually doing another. You think that I'm dying, but I'm laughing at you.

Instead, it just reminded her that sometimes there were no good choices.

but I think of Cardan lying beside me on the floor of the royal rooms. I think of his quicksilver smile. I think of how he would hate to be trapped like this. How unfair it would be for me to keep him this way and call it love. You already know how to end the curse. "I do love you," I whisper. "I will always love you.

You will need me to sweet-talk the door.

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.

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.

He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.

Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.

But the Courts aren't places humans are supposed to be, especially the Unseelie Court. Most faeries won't even go there." "We have to go - we have to get Ravus's heart. He's going to die if we don't." "What are we going to do? Go down there and ask for it?" "Pretty much.

Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.

You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat.

Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky. Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs. We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.

I try not to be too conscious of his long fingers tracing over the paper, of the sick thrill I get when he looks at me.

I will guard you from Death, for I have no fear of him.

Stop waiting. Sink those pretty little teeth into something.

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.

Yeah, Cardan should definitely trust you more. You seem really trustworthy. It's not like you're actually currently betraying him.

I do not understand why he likes me, but it is exciting to be liked.

He must have been handsome when he was alive and was handsome still, although made monstrous by his pallor and her awareness of what he was. His mouth looked soft, his cheekbones as sharp as blades, and his jaw curved, giving him an off-kilter beauty. His black hair a mad forest of dirty curls.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong?

It will hurt. Pain makes you strong.

It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what's left is all construct, all artifice.

It occurs to me that if I kill him, I can finally stop thinking about him. If I kill him, I won't have to feel like this anymore.