Quotes from Holly Black

If I can't be better than them , I will become so much worse

In the cool dark of the stables, with the snorting of faerie horses all around us, he takes my hands. "Nothing there would be the same without you.

The tan carpet was stiff and black with stripes of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. The walls were streaked with it, handprints smearing the dingy beige surfaces. And the bodies. Dozens of bodies. People she'd seen every day since kindergarten, people whom she'd played tag with and cried over and kissed, were lying at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop window.

So much of winning is waiting.

Go ahead and tell them if you want, but you should know this—someone you trust has already betrayed you.

It's too easy. I'm hungry for kindness. Hungry for attention. I want and want and want.

I keep my head down, as I probably should have done in the first place. And if I curse Cardan, then I have to curse myself, too, for being the fool who walked right into the trap he set for me.

te odio. te odio tanto que a veces no puedo pensar en otra cosa

Despite the deep pits that lead to oubliettes, the trees that move to make you lose your way, the ice spiders that wrap their prey in frozen gossamer, the mad king, and the curse.

I think he was flirting with me. I don't even remember deciding to hit him. ... "Madoc would be so proud - his little girl, remembering all her training," she says. "Staving off the terrifying possibility of romance.

Sometimes it seemed as though all her life was already used up in that dark basement, as if her mother's mouth on Tana's arm was the last thing in her life before this that had felt real. Everything else was just prologue and epilogue.

When the king returns, rose petals will scatter across his path, and his footfalls will bring an end to wrath.

That's what comes of hungering for something. You forget to check if it's rotten before you gobble it down.

And no matter how eager you are for it, you cannot make the moon set nor rise any faster

His every movement is languorous. It feels dangerous to rest my gaze on him for too long, as though he is so thoroughly debauched that it might be contagious.

However secretive his nature, however foolish his reasons for loving his father, I like that he does.

We should have called truce, he'd said, brushing back his ink-black hair impatiently. We should have called truce long before this. But neither of us called it, not then, not after.

King of the land, I am not here to fight your sharp tongue. My blood is cold and I prefer blades.

Get down on your knees, Cardan says, looking insufferably pleased with himself. His fury transmuted into gloating. "Beg. Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.

The weight of the sea seemed to pass down on him. He no longer had a sense of up or down. One was always suspended, fighting against the current or giving in to it. There would be no lying on beds of moss, no barbed words easily spoken, no falling down from too much wine, no dancing at all.

The most infuriating part was that she didn't have to mean it. She was mortal. She could lie. So why wouldn't she?

An ombré ball gown, its color deepening from white near my throat, through palest blue to deepest indigo at my feet. Over that is stitched the stark outlines of trees, the way I see them from my window as dusk is falling. The seamstress has even sewn on little crystal beads to represent stars.

The Roach clasps his hand on the back of my neck with a laugh. 'You did good, kid, you know that? You came out of the sea even tougher than you went in.' I have to look down because I am surprised by how much I wanted to hear someone say that. When I glance back up, Cardan is watching me carefully. He looks stricken. I shake my head, to keep him from saying whatever he's thinking.

And yours is to throw yourself into the mouth of the lion and hope it doesn't like your savor