Holly Black Quotes

“that's my wife!”
― Holly Black

“Let's start with a love story.

Or maybe it's another horror story. It seems like the difference is mostly in where the ending comes.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Boldness is rewarded. But what about all those girls, all those obedient girls who trusted and loved and wed and died? Weren't they bold, too?”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“How does it feel?' he asked. 'To be stuck in a fairy tale?'

'How does it feel to be one?' I countered...”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“He's handsome, but that makes his horribleness worse, somehow. As though he's taken something nice and made it awful. Being the single focus of his attention made me feel like a bug that a child was going to burn with a magnifying glass.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“You're awful.' He said it as though he was delighted. 'And the worst part is that you believe otherwise.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“You must be particularly kind to people. Other kids can act like monsters, but not you.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“She turned to me, head tilted, her expression pure confusion. As though I had no reason to be afraid of a broken heart. She had no idea how dangerous a broken heart could be.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Everyone makes mistakes. They trust the wrong people. They fall in love.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Fairy tales are full of girls who wait, who endure, who suffer. Good girls. Obedient girls. Girls who crush nettles until their hands bleed. Girls who haul water for witches. Girls who wander through deserts or sleep in ashes or make homes for transformed brothers in the woods. Girls without hands, without eyes, without the power of speech, without any power at all.

But then a prince rides up and sees the girl and finds her beautiful. Beautiful, not despite her suffering, but because of it.

And when I saw that note in my bag, I thought that maybe I was no longer stuck in a fairy tale, maybe I could be the hero of one.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“But love was also transforming. I knew that from fairy tales. It could turn you back from a cat or a frog or a beast. Probably it could turn you into those things, too.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“All stories are lessons.

Fairy tales have a moral: Stay on the path. Don't trust wolves. Don't steal things, not even things you think no normal person would care about. Share your food but don't trust people who want to share their food with you; don't eat their shiny red apples, nor their candy houses, nor any of it. Be nice, always nice, and polite to everyone: kings and beggars, witches and wounded bears. Don't break a promise.

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“I like stories,' he said. 'And perhaps I like you as well.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Faeries despise humans as liars, but there are different kinds of lying. Since you and I first came to Faerie, Jude, we've lied to each other plenty. We've pretended to be fine, pretended the possibility of being fine into existence. And when pretending seemed like it might be too hard, we just didn't ask each other the questions that would require it. We smiled and forced laughter and rolled our eyes at the Folk, as though we weren't afraid, when we were both scared all the time.

And if there were hairline cracks in all that pretending, we pretended those away, too.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Love is a noble cause,' Vivi reminded her. 'How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Does that mean you're going to leave her alone now?'

Cardan leaned in close, close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek. 'It's much too late for that.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“We- the Folk- don't love like you do,' Locke said. 'Perhaps you shouldn't trust me with your heart. I might break it.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Aren't you ever careless?' he asked.

'Always, with you.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“The first thing I noticed about her was that she had a smear of blue ink on her nose,' Vivi said. 'The second thing I noticed were her eyes, the colour of darkest amber. When she spoke, I was afraid she was talking to someone else.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“This will be over quickly, he'd said. But not everything is better for being fast.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Taryn and she had a faerie lover who came to her at night. He was generous and adoring, but visited only in the dark. He asked for two things: one, for her to keep their meetings secret, and two, never to look upon his face fully. And so, night after night she took delight in him but, after some time had passed, wondered what his secret could be.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“I pictured Locke's heart shot through with an arrow and then shook my head to get rid of the image. It wasn't like me to think things like that.

It especially wasn't like me to have a brief jolt of satisfaction from it.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“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.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Why are you looking at Jude like that?' I asked.

'I can't help it,' he said, never taking his gaze from you. 'I'm drawn to trouble.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Sometimes it's easier to be mad at the people close to us,' Vivi said, 'than to be mad at the people who deserve it.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“I suppose that's one good thing about being obedient and faithful and good. People think you will never surprise them.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“I think I understand now what you meant when you said I have to give up my mortal qualms. And I am willing to do that. But I want you to marry me.'

'Ah.' He sat down on the couch, looking stunned with lack of sleep. 'And so you came here in the middle of the night?'

'I hope that you love me,' I tried to sound the way Oriana did when she forbade us to do things- stern, but not unkind. 'And I will try to live as the Folk do. But you ought to marry me even if neither of those things were true, because otherwise I might ruin your fun.'

'My fun?' he echoed. Then he sounded worried. Then he sounded awake.

'Whatever game you are playing with Nicasia and Cardan,' I said. 'And with me. Tell Madoc we're to be wed and tell Jude about your real intentions or I will start shaping stories of my own.'
...
I realised that Locke might teach me lessons, but he wasn't going to like what I did once I learned them.

'You promised-' he began, but I cut him off.

'Not a marriage of a year and a day, either,' I said. 'I want you to love me until you die.'

He blinked. 'Don't you mean until you did? Because you're sure to.'

I shook my head. 'You're going to live forever. If you love me, I will become a part of your story. I will live on in that.'

He looked at me in a way he'd never done before, as though evaluating me all over again. Then he nodded. 'We will marry,' he said, holding up his hand. 'On three conditions. The first is that you will tell no one about us until the coronation of Prince Dain.'

That seemed like a small thing, the waiting.

'And during that time, you must not renounce me, no matter what I say or do.'

I know the nature of faerie bargains. I should have heard this as the warning that it was. Instead, I was only glad that two of his conditions seemed simple enough to fulfill.

'What else?'

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart's blood should run cold.

'Only this,' Locke said. 'Remember we don't love the way that you do.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“... jealousy wasn't a spice to me then. It was the whole meal and I was gagging it down.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Maybe it isn't the worst thing to want to be loved, even if you're not. Even if it hurts. Maybe being human isn't always being weak. Maybe it was the shame that was the problem.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing