Holly Black quotes
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“Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.144, Hachette UK
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“Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.”
-- Holly Black -
“She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.”
-- Holly Black -
“She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.”
-- Holly Black -
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“You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.”
-- Holly Black -
“I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good.”
-- Holly Black -
“You both ... you both saved me?" "Come on," said Luis. "You make it sound like it was hard for Val to go to the Unseelie Court, strike a deal with Roiben, challenge Mabry to a duel, win back your heart, and then get back here during rush hour.”
-- Holly Black -
“She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn.”
-- Holly Black -
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“I love you, you see...and I fear I have no way to say or show it that isn't terrible, except coming here. I would kill everyone in the world for you, if you wanted.......Or not obviously”
-- Holly Black -
“The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.204, Simon and Schuster
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“You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it.”
-- Holly Black -
“Changing is what people do when they have no options left.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2012). “Red Glove”, p.146, Simon and Schuster
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“Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.”
-- Holly Black -
“If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2012). “Tithe”, p.91, Simon and Schuster
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“I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING.”
-- Holly Black -
“They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.”
-- Holly Black -
“You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only thing I chose for myself. The only thing I want.”
-- Holly BlackSource : "Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale". Book by Holly Black, 2007.
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“Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today's tasks.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2013). “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown”, p.80, Hachette UK
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“I consider kissing her right there on the dirty couch, but self-preservation stops me. Once someone hurts you, it’s harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn’t stop you wanting them. Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse”
-- Holly Black -
“If I'm not a murderer," asked Corny, "how come I keep killing people?”
-- Holly Black -
“You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Everything was strange and beautiful and swollen with possibilities.”
-- Holly Black -
“Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.”
-- Holly Black -
“I'm afraid that whatever I touch is spoilt by the contact." "I'm not scared of being spoiled," Val said.”
-- Holly Black -
“The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Cold?" Ravus echoed. He took her arm and rubbed it between his hands, watching them as though they were betraying him. "Better?" He asked warily. His skin felt hot, even through the cloth of her shirt, his touch was both soothing and electric. She leaned into him without thinking. His thighs parted, rough black cloth scratching against her jeans as she moved between his long legs. His eyes half-lidded as he pushed himself off the desk, their bodies sliding together, his hands still holding hers. Then, suddenly, he froze.”
-- Holly Black -
“Startled, he loosed his grasp and she pulled free. He clutched her arm, but she spun around and pressed her mouth to his. His lips were rough, chapped. She felt the sting of fangs against her bottom lip. He made a sharp sound in the back of his throat and closed his eyes. Mouth opening under hers. The smell of him- of cold, damp stone- made her head swim. One kiss slid into another and it was perfect, was exactly right, was real.”
-- Holly Black -
“I like all the things that make you monstrous.”
-- Holly Black -
“It demeans you to cover rotten meat with honey. I know what I am. What would you want with a monster?" "Everything.”
-- Holly Black -
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“I'm sorry I kissed you- it was selfish and it upset you- but you can't ask me to pretend I didnt want to.”
-- Holly Black -
“I'm not very good at explaining things," she said. "But I think you have beautiful eyes. I love the gold in them. I love that they're different from my eyes- I see mine all the time and I'm bored with them.”
-- Holly Black -
“Once, she made a boy come out of his house and kiss her under the streetlight. It was her first kiss. She thinks it was probably his, too. She never told him and she never, ever will.”
-- Holly Black -
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“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.”
-- Holly Black -
“I can walk into someone's house, kiss their wife, sit down at their table, and eat their dinner. I can lift a passport at an airport, and in twenty minutes it will seem like it's mine. I can be a blackbird staring in the window. I can be a cat creeping along a ledge. I can go anywhere I want and do the worst things I can imagine, with nothing to ever connect me to those crimes. Today I look like me, but tomorrow I could look like you. I could be you.”
-- Holly Black -
“He’s quiet then. We lie next to each other, twin corpses waiting for burial.”
-- Holly Black -
“Because I am about to be devoured by poodles," I quip. "Remember me always, my love.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Occasionally, there are battles in the sky. One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls.”
-- Holly Black -
“Sometimes,†Sam says, “I can’t tell when you’re lying.†“I never lie,†I lie.”
-- Holly Black -
“You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat.”
-- Holly Black -
“It’s hard to come up with a scheme to thwart some other scheme you don’t even know about.”
-- Holly Black -
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“You okay?" Anton asks, looking at me like he's trying to figure out if I'm drunk. His plans depend on me. I look as blank as possible and hope that it freaks him out. No point in my being the only miserable one.”
-- Holly Black -
“For me the curse is a crutch, but the con is everything.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Poisonous jealousy thrummed through my veins.”
-- Holly Black -
“Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier.”
-- Holly Black -
“But now I wonder--what if everyone is pretty much the same and it's just a thousand small choices that add up to the person you are? No good or evil, no black and white, no inner demons or angels whispering the right answers in our ears like it's some cosmic SAT test. Just us, hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day,making the best choices we can. The thought is horrifying. If that's true, then there's no right choice. There's only choice.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2012). “Black Heart”, p.189, Simon and Schuster
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“I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they trash in your hands as though with an excess of passion.”
-- Holly Black -
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“She’s an old lady,†Barron says. “And she’s been locked up for years. Let her have some fun. She needs to blow off steam. Seduce old dudes. Lose money at canasta.”
-- Holly Black -
“Everyone danced -- sweaty bodies packed tight, drunk with sound.”
-- Holly Black -
“It's not that I want you to be a certain way--don't you want a boyfriend?" "Why bother with that? Let's find incubi." "Incubi?" "Demons. Plural. Like octopi. And we're much more likely to find them"--her voice dropped conspiratorially--"while swimming naked in the Atlantic a week before Halloween than practically anywhere else I can think of.”
-- Holly Black -
“Nevermore," Lolli said. "That's what Luis calls it, because there are three rules: Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row.”
-- Holly Black -
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“It's starting to sink in," Corny said. "I can almost look at you without wanting to bang my head against the wall.”
-- Holly Black -
“She can’t help it. She loves the con. I tell myself I’m not like her, but I have to admit I love it too.”
-- Holly Black -
“His words were still clear in her mind from that first meeting. "Whoever eats this will love you." She looked into the mirror, at her birthmark, bright as blood, at her kiss-stung lips, at the absurd smile stretching across her face. Carefully separating out the crushed pieces of shell, she pulled the dried pulp free from its cage of veins. Piece by piece, she put the sweet brown fruit in her own mouth and swallowed it down.”
-- Holly Black -
“I can’t help feeling a little bit competitive and a little bit disappointed in myself that I’m already so far behind. After all, Yulikova thinks Barron has a real future with the Bureau. She told me so. I told her that sociopaths are relentlessly charming. I think she figured I was joking.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.”
-- Holly Black -
“We all wind up drawn to what we're afraid of, drawn to try to find a way to make ourselves safe from a thing by crawling inside of it, by loving it, by becoming it.”
-- Holly Black -
“in her dreams, blood tasted like fizzy strawberry soda. If you drank it too fast, you got brain freeze. When she was older, after she'd licked a cut on her finger, the taste of that became the taste in her dreams: copper and tears.”
-- Holly Black -
“If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely you should be friend to my friend.”
-- Holly Black -
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“You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.”
-- Holly Black -
“She knew she shouldn't feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.”
-- Holly BlackSource : Holly Black (2013). “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown”, p.153, Hachette UK
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“Tana. In all my long life, though there were many times I prayed for it, no one has ever saved me. No one but you.”
-- Holly Black -
“So I'm scared, because you're not just not human, you're not like anyone....there's nobody like you in all the world and it's you I want. I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.”
-- Holly Black -
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“There is nothing for her beyond those gates," Gavriel said. "Do you think to bring her along like a talisman to remind you of your humanity? Or do you think sharing your damnation will lighten the burden of it?”
-- Holly Black -
“It is my belief that books are living things.”
-- Holly Black -
“But if you didn't believe in monsters, then how were you going to be able to keep safe from them?”
-- Holly Black -
“She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?" His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "yes," he said finally. -Tana and Gavriel-page 33- chapter 5”
-- Holly Black -
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“I don't want to be a vampire' she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did.-Tana Bach-page 29-chapter 4”
-- Holly Black -
“You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself. 'Not yet, not yet.”
-- Holly Black -
“Are you sure?" Aidan asked, "Gavriel's still a vampire." "He warned me about you and about them. He didn't have to. I'm not going to repay that by-" she hesitated, then frowned. "What did you call him?" "That's his name," Aidan sighed, "Gavriel. The other vampires, while they were tying me to the bed, they said his name." "Oh." With a final tug she pulled the blanked free and tossed it over to 'Gavriel' -Tana and Aidan-page 23-chapter 3”
-- Holly Black -
“I'm going to take off your gag.And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?"- Tana to Gavriel, page 20 chapter 3”
-- Holly Black -
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“He let out a hiss of pain,then smiled that crooked, sheepish smile he always fell back on when he was caught doing something bad. "Sorry. I-I didn't mean to. I just- I've been lying here for hours, thinking about blood.”
-- Holly Black -
“He must have been handsome when he was alive and was handsome still, although made monstrous by his pallor and her awareness of what he was. His mouth looked soft, his cheekbones as sharp as blades, and his jaw curved, giving him an off-kilter beauty. His black hair a mad forest of dirty curls.”
-- Holly Black -
“Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams – will be sweeter than another’s cries of love.”
-- Holly Black -
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“I haven't had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone's dead and my root beer's gone.”
-- Holly Black -
“Every hero is the villain of his own story.”
-- Holly Black -
“I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price.†“Not usually so immediately.†I shake my head. “You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They’ll arrest you.†His grin widens. “I like handcuffs.†I groan. “There is something seriously wrong with you.†“Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn’t fix.”
-- Holly Black -
“You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.”
-- Holly Black -
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“She wants me to take out Patton.†Barron’s brows draw together. “Take out? As in transform him?†“No,†I say. “As in take out to dinner. She thinks we’d make a good couple.”
-- Holly Black -
“It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.”
-- Holly Black -
“We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.”
-- Holly Black -
“You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.†“Not ever?†I ask. Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.”
-- Holly Black -
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“She sits up. I can’t read her expression, but her cheeks look a little pink. “I didn’t think you were going to be here.†“I live here.”
-- Holly Black -
“The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them.”
-- Holly Black -
“The problem with cell phones is that you can’t slam them down into a cradle when you hang up. Your only option is to throw them, and if you do, they just skitter across the floor and crack their case. It’s not satisfying at all. I close my eyes and bend down to pick up the pieces.”
-- Holly Black -
“He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”
-- Holly Black -
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“Being infected, being a vampire, it’ s always you. Maybe it’ s more you than ever before. It’ s you as you always were, deep down inside.”
-- Holly Black -
“Death’s favorites don’t die.”
-- Holly Black -
“Isn't every hero aware of all the terrible reason they did those good deeds?" Aware of every mistake they ever made and how good people got hurt because of their decisions? Don't they recall the moments they weren't heroic at all? The moments where their heroism led to more deaths than deliberate villainy ever could?”
-- Holly Black -
“Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying”
-- Holly Black -
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“I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense. All friendships are negotiations of power.”
-- Holly Black -
“The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.”
-- Holly Black -
“Put your puppet on the throne." said Talathain. "You may make her Queen but she won’t be Queen for long.”
-- Holly Black -
“What is it? For what do you scheme? Ethine's death would weigh on you and the stain of her blood would seep into your skin" "Do you know what they wish for when they give you the Unseelie crown?" Roiben's tone was soft, like he was telling a secret. Kaye could barely catch his words. "That you be made of ice. What makes you think it matters what I feel? What makes you think I feel anything at all?”
-- Holly Black -
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