Quotes from Holly Black

Listen," I say, my gaze going to the road, watching for headlights. "I don't know how long I have, but if Bogdana knows where you are, it's not safe. Fill your pockets with salt. Rowan berries will keep you from being glamoured by their magic. They hate cold-wrought iron. And they can't lie." I correct myself. "We. We can't lie.

That's smart,' Justin said, thinking of Theseus picking his way through the Minotaur's lair, unwinding Ariadne's string behind him. Thinking of how his heart had pounded when he was lost in the stacks. It wasn't just smart, it was clever, even classical. He wished he'd thought of it.

If I cannot be better than them, I will become much worse.

That was the problem with monsters. Sometimes they looked like everybody else.

Lying is so easy here. I can do it all day long and never be caught.

Er sang sie durch ihre abgrundtiefe Einsamkeit, denn Trauer konnte man nicht verdrängen, abtun oder bekämpfen. Trauer hörte nur auf, wenn man sie durchlitt.

They're fickle as cats and twice as cruel. You know the tales. They'll steal your heart if you let them and if you don't, they'll curse you for your good sense. They're night things—spirits—and don't care for the day. They don't like gold, either. It reminds them of the sun.

Stick creatures, enormous and terrible, huge spiders made of brambles and branches. Monstrous things with gaping mouths, their bodies of burned and blackened bark, their teeth of stone and ice. Mortal body parts visibly part of them, as though someone took apart people like they were dolls and glued them back together in awful shapes.

I fall asleep in the back of the debate team meeting. I wake up in the middle of a debate about whether or not to wake me.

So long as I live, you will obey this.

Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke. "You are more dangerous than daybreak." Before Tana could reply, he stepped into the lengthening shadows of morning and was gone.

far from Cardan, everything has taken on a tinge of unreality, and I worry that somehow the curse was never broken, that all this is the fantasy of a feverish mind.

I'm so tired," I say out loud. "So tired." I sit there for a long time, watching the rising sun gild the sky, listening to the waves crash as the tide goes out, when a creature flies up to alight on the edge of my window. At first it seems like an owl, but it's got hob eyes. "Tired of what, sweetmeat?" it asks me. I sigh and answer honestly for once. "Of being powerless." The hob studies my face, then flies off into the night.

She's good at picking out clothes to send a certain message- even if the message of her drawings appears to be "stay away from me or I will chop off your head"...

Of course I like books!' Justin said, looking up. He didn't know how to explain. He'd started library school to get Linda to Sandlin, but he actually liked it. It felt good to carefully organize the books so that other people would know what they were getting themselves into. 'I've always liked books. I just don't trust them.

He's flint, you're tinder.

It is difficult, though, not to be shamed be being nearly undressed, with bed hair and bad breath.

I can show you a version of yourself, Taryn. One you've never imagined. It's terrible to be a girl trapped in a story. But you can be more than that. You can be the teller. You can shape the story. You can make all of Faerie love you.

Vuelvo a casa cubierta de moretones, producto de las caídas y las patadas. Pero hay una cosa que no saben: sí, me dan miedo, pero siempre he vivido asustada, desde el día que llegué aquí. Me crió el hombre que asesinó a mis padres, retenida en una tierra llena de monstruos. Vivo con ese miedo, dejo que se asiente sobre mis huesos y lo ignoro.

I didn't think it worked like that. I thought love was supposed to happen when you least expected it, like a sap to the skull.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest, with black hair as iridescent as a raven's wing and cheekbones sharp enough to cut out a girl's heart. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must. Just come home

I crouch in the hollow beneath the tree, looking up at the spangled sky and the bright scythe of a moon.

Humans are like mice,' Balekin went on. 'Dead before they learn how to be canny.