Holly Black Quotes & Sayings

If you don't know why you're apologizing, your apology probably sucks. — 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

You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want. — Holly Black

I wanted to be in love like in the storybooks and songs and ballads. Love that hits you like a lightning bolt. And I'm sorry, because yeah, I get that you think I'm ridiculous. I get that you think I'm hilarious. I know, I get that you're mocking me. I get how stupid I am, but at least I know. — Holly Black

The book turned out to be one she'd read before, where zombies chased around a brother-and-sister reporting team. — 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 Black

Cruddy Mouthbreather — Holly Black

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder. — Holly Black

How are you?" he asked softly.

"Well," Tana said. "Every new outfit I get, I manage to ruin within a few hours."

His grin was immediate, his gaze going to her dress and then away. "Leather wipes down. — Holly Black

You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it. — Holly Black

At the window of my room, I catch my reflection in the glass. Shaggy black hair. Sneer.I look like a hungry ghost, glowering in at a world I am no longer fit to be a part of. — Holly Black

Then her mouth is sliding against mine. Her lips open, soft and yielding. Our teeth click together, and she tastes like every dark thought I've ever had. — Holly Black

I need your help, says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila's, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk. — Holly Black

Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con. — Holly Black

She goes through this world as of nothing touches her, as if no one can reach her, as though she's focused on something bigger and better and more important that she's not going to tell you a single thing about. It charms them. — Holly Black

Each person seemed to have a destination, but Val was a piece of driftwood, spinning down a river, not even sure in what direction she was moving. But she knew how to make herself spin faster. — Holly Black

He reached into the bag and drew out an odd array of manga, ripped paperbacks of books both classic and modern, and a small stack of crumpled magazines. See, I even brought some things to read aloud. I wasn't sure what you'd like, so there's a bit of everything. — Holly Black

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

They are twilight creatures, beings of dawn and dusk, of standing between one thing and another, of not quite and almost, of borderlands and shadows. — Holly Black

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 vampire looked at her in bewilderment. Then he glanced toward the door and his expression grew sly. "If you free me, I could hold them off. — Holly Black

Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does. — Holly Black

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it
a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come. — Holly Black

You can't!" Aaron said. "Didn't you hear anything I just told you? You could die!
" Well, don't kill me," Call said. "How about our goal is not to die. Both of us. Not dying. Together. — Holly Black

We know about your brother. He called and told us himself. Said to imagine Faerieland like an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland. I told him it was more like an exclusive boarding school in hell. — Holly Black

They wore their strange beauty like war paint. — Holly Black

You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself.
'Not yet, not yet. — Holly Black

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about ... the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard.
Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"
with a lady. — Holly Black

Every plan is a house of cards. — Holly Black

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go. — Holly Black

That's the spirit. Aaron hid a grin. He was already wearing his armband, just above his elbow. Somehow he managed to make it look cool. Call had tied his around his forearm and was fairly sure it looked like a bandage. — Holly Black

Fine, fine, everyone's fine," said the vampire, a mad gleam in his red eyes, crossing his arms over his chest as Bela Lugosi did in black-and-white films. "Fine as scattered pieces of sand."
She wondered how much effort it had taken him to talk to her the way he had - to, what was it he'd said? Keeping my thoughts clearly ordered - and how crazy he was going to be now, as a result of that strain. — Holly Black

I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things. — 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

Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research. — 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

There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she'll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. — Holly Black

In the older folklore, faeries were frightening beings. In fact, it was such a bad idea to get their attention that people would use flattering euphemisms for them, such as 'the people of peace,' 'the little people,' and 'the good neighbors.' — Holly Black

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling. — Holly Black

i really, really like beating people.
Note: I am not saying I really, really like winning. Winning is a more abstract concept, and in a quiz bowl, winning usually meant having to come back in the next round and do it all over again. No, I liked beating people. I liked seeing the look on the other team's faces when I got a question they couldn't answer. I loved their geektastic disappointment when they realized they weren't good enough to rank up. I loved using trivia to make people doubt themselves. — Holly Black

You keep talking, but you're not making any sense. Of course you upset someone in the government. You pretended to be the governor of New Jersey and confessed to a bunch of crimes."
I can't help the small smile that's playing at the corners of my mouth. "So," I say, "how did it go over? — Holly Black

Stories like that were will-o'-the-wisps, glowing in the deepest, darkest parts of forests, leading travelers farther and farther from safety, out toward an ever-moving mark. — Holly Black

If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back. — Holly Black

You're not the way everyone says you are," Kaye said, looking at him so fiercely that he couldn't meet her gaze. "I know you're not."
"You know nothing of me," he said. He wanted to punish her for the trust he saw on her face, to raze it from her now so that he would be spared the sight of her when that trust was betrayed.
He wanted to tell her he found her impossibly alluring, at least half enchanted, body bruised and scratched, utterly unaware she would not live past dawn. He wondered what she would say in the face of that. — 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

Don't forget to smolder! — Holly Black

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill monsters and feel quite proud of themselves. — Holly Black

If you are a crazy person who needs to have clandestine meetings, then, just like in real estate, what matters most is location, location, location. — Holly Black

Once, there was a girl who found a sword in the woods. Once, there was a girl who made a bargain with the Folk. Once, there was a girl who'd been a knight in the service of a monster. Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself. Once, there was a girl ... Hazel — Holly Black

Follow that lizard! — Holly Black

I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times. — Holly Black

Every night, in every Coldtown, people die. People are fragile. They die of mistakes, of overdoses, of sickness. But mostly they die of Death. — Holly Black

Kiss my ass Rath Roiben Rye — Holly Black

Ben padded over and turned the knob. Jack was unlacing his boots while Hazel brushed the leaves out of her hair, her eyes red and a little puffy. They both froze.

"It's just me," Ben said.

"We weren't - I mean, not really - " Jack started, making gestures toward the bed that Ben thought meant "I am not trying to dishonor your sister, although it is possible that I am hoping to have sex with her," at the same time Hazel began apologizing for ditching Ben.

He held up his hand to stop them from talking. "I need one of you - ideally Hazel - to explain what's actually been going on, and I need that to happen right now, starting with where you were last night. — Holly Black

Please,Tana,please.' -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown — Holly Black

I'm sick of you all acting like I'm this English freak raining on your little math-science parade. Sung seems to think my contribution to this team is a little less than everyone else's."
"Anyone can memorize book titles!" Sung shouted. "Oh, please.Like I care what you think? You don't even know the difference between Keats and Byron. — Holly Black

No," said Luis, "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court."
"Well, I'm not, he dumped me."
"You can't get dumped by the lord of the night court."
"Oh, yes, you can. You so completely can. — Holly Black

The Alkahest is gone. If he's the one who got it, they're not going to bother with prison. He'll be dead as soon as they find him. — Holly Black

I swear to fucking God, I will spray you again, — Holly Black

People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one. — Holly Black

Aidan pulled against his bonds. "They keep talking to him in a whole bunch of languages. A lot of French. Something about the Thorn of Istra. I think he's in trouble."
"Are you?" Tana asked.
"Not exactly," said Gavriel. — Holly Black

It's hard to come up with a scheme to thwart some other scheme you don't even know about. — Holly Black

I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up.
He called it his second smile. — Holly Black

If life were like a video game, she would have used her power move to whip Jen in the air and knock her against the wall with two strikes of a lacrosse stick. Of course, if life really were like a video game, Val would probably have to do that in a bikini and with giant breasts, each one made of separately animated polygons. — Holly Black

Everybody dies alone, Jameson said, and kept going. Not everybody wakes up right after. — 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

Can you really cook meth in a hotel coffeepot?" - Cassel
"Sure," Jones says, looking into his cup thoughtfully.
Guess Mom was right about one thing. — Holly Black

In my parents' house, nothing was ever thrown away. Clothes piled up, formed drifts that grew into mountains Philip, Baron, and I would climb and leap from. The heaps of garments filled the hallway and chased my parents out of their own bedroom, so that they eventually slept in the room that was once Dad's office. Empty bags and boxes filled gaps in the clutter, boxes that once held rings and sneakers and clothes. A trumpet that my mother wanted to make into a lamp rested atop a stack of tattered magazines filled with articles Dad planned to read, near the heads and feet and arms of dolls Mom promised she would stitch together for a kid from Carney, all beside an endless heap of replacement buttons, some still in their individual glassine bags. A coffeemaker rested on a tower of plates, propped up on one end to keep coffee from flooding the counters. — Holly Black

Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug. — Holly Black

Three of them, dressed in silvery gray, on three horses - one black, one white, and the third red. — Holly Black

Tell them I'm like you," Gavriel said as they began to slow down.
Aidan laughed. "I think they can see you're not like us anymore."
"No," he said. "Tell them you know me. That I'm like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them."
"Wait," said Winter. "Wait. Is he saying he wasn't at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a vampire?"
Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. "You know me," he said, and a chill went up Tana's spine. "You've known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face."
"What does he mean?" Midnight asked.
"I don't know," Winter said in an odd voice. "Nothing. — Holly Black

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

You are the best kind of killer, Cassel Sharpe, the kind that never has blood on his hands. The kind that never has to sicken at the sight of what he's done, or come to like it too much. — 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? — Holly Black

Sam: You know what I wish?
Cassel: What?
Sam: That someone would covert my bed into a robot that would fight other bed robots to the death for me. — Holly Black

The light, by the light, by the light of the bloodred moon. I'll be killing you soon. — Holly Black

Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically
an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be?
Seriously, what else could go wrong? — Holly Black

You better have kissed him! You better have kissed him so hard that he just about choked on your tongue. And if not, you better go kiss him like that right now. — Holly Black

On the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she'd cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress. — Holly Black

Seems like Death came back for me."
He grinned, a subtly odd grin that somehow made her smile back. "You drove him off again. Sleep, Tana. I will guard you from Death, for I have no fear of him. We have been adversaries for so long that we are closer than friends. — Holly Black

You have carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you have carried it long before that. — Holly Black

She'd known he'd understand. Brothers and sisters had their own language, their own shorthand. She was glad to be able to share the weird, ridiculous impossibleness of it with the only person who knew all the same stories, with the person who'd made those stories in the first place. (pg. 117) — Holly Black

He saw now the ways in which they tried to be careful with each other, afraid of hitting those raw places where they might hurt each other almost without trying. But sparing another person is a tricky thing. It's easy to think you're succeeding when you're failing spectacularly. — Holly Black

There's nothing quite as funny as someone else's misery - Cassel Sharpe — Holly Black

The Lady or The Tiger,'
...
'My lady, the tiger, — Holly Black

Haven't you watched the feeds?" Winter asked her, more gently. "Vampires like anything and everything that keeps them from getting bored. Anything and everything." — Holly Black

But in all the stories, you have a single chance; and if you miss it, then it's gone. The door isn't there when you go back to look. There is no second invitation to the ball. This is my chance. — Holly Black

I guess it's true; no one will ever love you like your family. — Holly Black

I really love the idea of the poetically mad - the character that is imbued with the romantic madness. Like River from 'Firefly' or Drusilla from 'Buffy.' Someone dangerously unhinged, where you're really not sure they're going to be reliable minute-to-minute. — Holly Black

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts. — Holly Black

One night you will ask me for something I cannot give. — Holly Black

If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you."
Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone. — Holly Black

It's just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he'd forget my water or food and I'd cry and cry and cry." She stops talking and looks out the window. "I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up. — Holly Black

He smiled, a real smile, the kind real boys gave real girls. "It's been a very long time since anyone worried for me. — Holly Black

She didn't know how much she'd been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn't. — Holly Black

Don't be drinking the Haterade. — Holly Black

She made her voice as firm as possible. "Don't let them catch you."
He hesitated, clearly surprised by her words. Then he smiled again, inclining his head in a shallow bow, acknowledging everything she'd left unsaid. "Traveling with you was a delight worth any delay, but I can delay no longer. — Holly Black

He closed his eyes. 'Don't,' he said, but she could hear despair in his voice. It made her even angrier. It made her want to live down to his expectations. — Holly Black

And Barron is probably right - we should give this up. Not for the reason he's saying but for the one that's implied. The one about it not being okay to lurk around outside buildings, spying on girls you like. — Holly Black

Oh yeah,Call said under his breath. I'm the crazy one. Nothing to worry about at the ole Magisterium. Evil pony school, here we come. Pg. 58 — Holly Black