Holly Black > Quotes

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“By you, I am forever undone.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment.
“No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.”
"I can't.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“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.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”
I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.”
― Holly Black, White Cat

“Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips." His eyes are black with desire. "By you, I am forever undone.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”

I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”

He grins up at me. “They missed.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today's tasks.”
― Holly Black, Ironside

“Tell me again what you said at the revel,” he says, climbing over me, his body against mine.

“What?” I can barely think.

“That you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me that you hate me.”

“I hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

He kisses me harder.

“I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.”
― Holly Black, White Cat

“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“I missed you," I whisper against his skin and feel dizzy with the intimacy of the admission, feel more naked than when he could see every inch of me. "In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you."
"My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“This is my room,” he points out, affronted. “And that’s my wife.”

“So you keep telling everyone,” the Bomb says. “But I am going to take out her stitches, and I don’t think you want to watch that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe he’d like to hear me scream.”

“I would,” Cardan says, standing. “And perhaps one day I will.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Let's have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“It is my belief that books are living things.... And as living things, they need to be protected.”
― Holly Black

“Kill him before he makes you love him.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Jude, you can't really think I don't know it's you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing