Quotes from Holly Black

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

You want to know what I did to make him raise me up?' I ask, leaning toward her, close enough that she can feel the warmth of my breath. 'I kissed him on the mouth, and then I threatened to kiss him some more if he didn't do exactly what I wanted.' 'Liar,' she hisses. 'If you're such good friends,' I say, repeating her own words back to her with malicious satisfaction, 'why don't you ask him?

It hadn't made sense. He wouldn't accept it. He wouldn't go home.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Taryn and she had a faerie lover who came to her at night. He was generous and adoring, but visited only in the dark. He asked for two things: one, for her to keep their meetings secret, and two, never to look upon his face fully. And so, night after night she took delight in him but, after some time had passed, wondered what his secret could be.

Do something!" someone says, but in my delirium, I can't tell who is speaking. Abruptly, Valerian is kicked off me. I roll onto my side, coughing. Cardan is looming there. Tears and snot are running down my face, but all I can do is lie in the dirt and spit out pieces of sweet, fleshy pulp. I have no idea why I am crying.

I am not okay. I am not okay. I am not okay.

It isn't that mortals can't be pretty—many of them are—but their beauty doesn't make you feel pummeled by it. I feel a little pummeled by Oak's beauty. If I look at him too long, I want to take a bite out of him.

It's exhausting to watch someone try to be a ship that rocks will break against.

He's handsome, but that makes his horribleness worse, somehow. As though he's taken something nice and made it awful. Being the single focus of his attention made me feel like a bug that a child was going to burn with a magnifying glass.

Aren't you ever careless?' he asked. 'Always, with you.

Faerie exists beside and below mortal towns, in the shadows of mortal cities, and at their rotten, derelict, worm-eaten centres. Faeries live in hills and valleys and barrows, in alleys and abandoned mortal buildings.

he is what he is. He cannot be other than his nature.

Zgnije wszystko, co masz i czym jesteÅ›, stanie siÄ™ nicoÅ›ciÄ…. W nico?? siÄ™ obrócisz. NicoÅ›ciÄ… jesteÅ›.

So this is how you've been living,' the little imp grumbles. 'A worm in a butterfly's cocoon.

Cardan was left to be suckled by a little black cat whose kittens came stillborn.' 'He survived on cat milk?' I exclaim. ... I think again of the globe I held in Eldred's study, of Cardan dressed in rags, looking to the woman in my chamber for approval, which came only when he was awful. An abandoned prince, weaned on cat milk and cruelty, left to roam the palace like a little ghost.

Once you're wed, if you want to take other lovers, she better be with you when you do it and she better be into it. If it's not fun for everyone, it's not happening.

Cardan manages to persuade my sister to tell him a little about the mortal world. He sounds delighted at her description of slushy machines, with their violently bright colours and sugary strangeness. She is hallway through an explanation on gummy worms when we are back at the palace and climbing down from the carriage.

It's you I love.'' he says. ''I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.

There are two ways for mortals to become permanent subjects of the Court: marrying into it or honing some great skill—in metallurgy or lute playing or whatever. Not interested in the first, I have to hope I can be talented enough for the second.

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

Brambleweft starts to sketch- billowing skirts and cunning little capes, corsets stitched with fanciful creatures. Butterflies alighting along arms and in elaborate headpieces. I am charmed at the alien vision of myself- my corset will have two golden beetles stitched in what looks like a breastplate, with Madoc's moon crest and elaborate swirls of shining thread continuing down my front, and tiny sheer drop sleeves of more gold.

Now the Court's heart is yours and yours alone. Let's break it.

I cannot seem to contort myself back in to the shape of a dutiful child. I am becoming unravelled. I am becoming undone.

I don't mind being one-handed,' Cardan interjects. 'But if you're going to restrain both of my hands, then you'll have to pour the wine directly in to my mouth.