Quotes from Holly Black

Jude, You are in no mood for games. Very well. I am in no mood for them, either. Let me write it outright: you are pardoned. I revoke your banishment. I rescind my words. Come home. Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must. Just come home. Cardan

You sure you want to cross me?" In that moment she's her father's daughter.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

The Grand General would mount your head on a wall," Nicasia informed him, patting his cheek. "A very fine head," he informed her with a wicked grin. "Suitable for mounting.

She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me.

She tastes like every dark thought I've ever had.

There's something about her—Cassel, I have met many evil men and women in my life. I have made deals with them, drank with them. I have done things that I myself have difficulty reconciling—terrible things. But I have never known anyone like your mother. She is a person without limits—or if she has any, she hasn't found them yet. She never needs to reconcile anything.

I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him. If he can rationalize what I did to him, it's easy to imagine how he rationalized what he did to me.

Choose a future, Balekin had commanded him when he'd first brought Cardan to Hollow Hall. But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads. Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh. Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.

I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up. He called it his second smile.

You're mortal," he informs me. In his other hand, he's carrying an empty goblet, tipped over absently, as though he's forgotten he still carries it. "It's not safe for you here. Especially if you go around stabbing everyone.

Everything was strange and beautiful and swollen with possibilities.

A stray dog, I might understand," she said. "But this? You are too softhearted." No, Mabry," Ravus said. "I am not." He looked in Val's direction. "I think she wants to die." Maybe you can help her after all," Mabry said. "You're good at helping people die.

You can't eat some of a dumpling and put it back,' Oak insists. 'That's revolting.' Cardan considers that villainy takes many forms, and he is good at all of them.

Cardan's eyebrows rise, but he has all the appearance of blissful unconcern. "My lady, you flatter me. I had no idea you were interested." Her gaze is unflinching as she passes her gift to one of Cardan's personal guard. "May you grow into the wisdom of your counselors." "The fervent prayer of many," he says.

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

They loved him because he was a prince and a faerie and magical and you were supposed to love princes and faeries and magical people.

only under the water can I allow myself to weep. Only under the water can I admit that I almost died and that I was terrified and that I wish there was someone to whom I could tell all that.

You are nothing. You barely exist at all. Your only purpose is to create more of your kind before you die. He's wrong about me. I am going to make my mayfly life count for something. I won't be afraid of him or of Prince Dain's censure. If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse. -Pg. 210

I hope it unnerves them to know that I am lying. After all, if the insult to me is pointing out that I am mortal, then this is my riposte: I live here, too, and I know the rules. Perhaps I even know them better than you since you were born into them, but I had to learn. Perhaps I know them better than you because you have greater leeway to break them.

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

Some might think of him as a strong draught, burning the back of one's throat, but invigorating all the same. You might beg to differ. So long as you're begging, he doesn't mind a bit.

You can't!" Aaron said. "Didn't you hear anything I just told you? You could die! " Well, don't kill me," Call said. "How about our goal is not to die. Both of us. Not dying. Together.

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways.