Holly Black Quotations

'Twilight' passed like a fever through the sophisticated reader and the unsophisticated reader alike. People devoured those books in single sittings, over weekends, with a kind of raw intensity that is rare.

I think there are a lot of really positive aspects to social media for novelists. Even though our work is pretty solitary, through Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram and blogging in general, we're better able to connect directly with readers.

Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.

'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.'

Everything scares me. I'm very easily frightened. But the thing that scares me most is zombies. I really, really don't like zombies.

Faeries are associated with wild untamed nature, with art, and with death - so the folklore is rich with different stories to explore.

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

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

I've loved vampires for a very long time. In eighth grade, I guess, my research paper was on vampires.

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

The problem with faerie gifts is that they always come with a price, which is why they are made by the desperate and the foolish.

Vampires aren't made - they're just born that way, and no one knows why. They're sort of a race unto themselves.

Writers usually don't get to pick our own covers. I know it's surprising to hear that.

Growing up, my mom was a painter, my best friend was a painter, my husband is a painter. For a long time I knew artists, and I didn't know any writers.

I loved Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat'. I found a copy of 'Interview' when I was in seventh grade at a garage sale for 25 cents. It had a crazy cover.

I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language.

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

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.

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.

I think there's a reason that horror appeals to teens. There's a lot of useful lessons to take away from reading horror. We get to be scared in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can put the book down if we get too scared, and no one will ever know if we decide not to pick it up again.

I wrote a book called 'Doll Bones', which was another middle-grade book, and when I was writing it, I needed a place in the U.S. that made bone china. And there are only two places in the U.S. that make bone china. They made it by grinding down actual cow bones. It was a plot point. It was a creepy doll book.

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.

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.'

When I was a kid in the U.S., 'Doctor Who' wasn't really on, but you would occasionally catch an episode. Different stations did marathons.

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.

One of the great things about writing middle-grade books is that it's really a nice break, when you're writing super intense stuff like 'Coldtown', to be able to write something a little lighter - calm down and do something different.

One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it.

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.

Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.

When we talk about good books, we often talk about good sentences, but what we rarely talk about is reader pleasure. Yet it is reader pleasure that is going to make a book break out into the kind of success that makes it into a household name.

What I've always loved about faeries is the way that they, unlike so many other supernatural creatures, are not human and have never been human. They have different customs and different taboos, and woe to anyone who breaks them.

There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.'

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.

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.

This is never going to be over,” I shout. “Someone will always be after me. There’s always consequences. Well, BRING IT. I am done with being afraid, and I am done with you.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings.

I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen.

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be

His eyes look too bright, the way the do in people who are in love, people who are enraged, and people who are completely bonkers.

It's okay," he informs me. "Your grandfather is teaching me how to play poker." If I know Grandad, that means what he'll really be teaching Sam is how to cheat.

Put your puppet on the throne." said Talathain. "You may make her Queen but she won’t be Queen for long.

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.

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.

You set me up," I say. "One big con. You can't blame me because I turned out not to be gullible enough. You can't blame the mark. That's not how it works. Have some respect for the nature of the game.

Crippled things are always more beautiful. It's the flaw that brings out beauty.

She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.

I thought you were her knight, but you have become only her woodsman--taking little girls into the forest to cut out their hearts.

A mortal had woven it, a man who, having caught sight of the Seelie queen, had spent the remainder of his short life weaving depictions of her. He had died of starvation, raw, red fingers staining the final tapestry.

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.

I did it to get what I want. Maybe I should regret that, but I can’t. Sometimes you do the bad thing and hope for the good result.

There’s something about her—Cassel, I have met many evil men and women in my life. I have made deals with them, drank with them. I have done things that I myself have difficulty reconciling—terrible things. But I have never known anyone like your mother. She is a person without limits—or if she has any, she hasn’t found them yet. She never needs to reconcile anything.

It's too early for there to be any coffee. I stare dully at the empty pot in the common room, while Sam picks up a jar of instant grounds. "Don't," I warn him. He scoops up a heaping spoonful and, heedlessly, shovels it into his mouth. It crunches horribly. Then his eyes go wide. "Dry," he croaks. "Tongue...shriveling." I shake my head, picking up the jar. "It's dehydrated. You're supposed to add water. Good thing you're mostly made of water." He tries to say something. Brown powder dusts his shirt. "Also," I tell him, "that's decaf.

For me the curse is a crutch, but the con is everything.

Because I am about to be devoured by poodles," I quip. "Remember me always, my love.

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.

The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.

At the end of a criminal’s life, it’s always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left. I’ve heard Grandad’s war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell. Birth to grave, we know it’ll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

You really dug your own grave,” he mutters. “And I’m going to bury you in it.” “Say that louder,” I tell him, under my breath. “I dare you.

There are dog people and cat people.

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.

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.

It’s hard to look at Barron now, but I do. He’s smirking. His black hair and black suit make him into a shadow, as if I conjured some dark mirror of myself.

There’s nothing like a gunshot to make you the life of the party.

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone’s watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he’s actually sawing a girl in half. You think he’s doing one trick when he’s actually doing another. You think that I’m dying, but I’m laughing at you.

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.

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.

It's the flaw that brings out the beauty.

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.

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.

Mirroring behavior. When a mark takes a drink from his water glass, so should you. When he smiles, so should you. Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique.

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.

Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.

Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again.

That’s family for you. Can’t live with them, can’t murder them.

She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.

Ruthless. That’s my girl.

Everything was strange and beautiful and swollen with possibilities.

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

I'm afraid that whatever I touch is spoilt by the contact." "I'm not scared of being spoiled," Val said.

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.

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.

It demeans you to cover rotten meat with honey. I know what I am. What would you want with a monster?" "Everything.

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

I like all the things that make you monstrous.

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.

She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone -- desire so acute that it became despair.

But the Courts aren't places humans are supposed to be, especially the Unseelie Court. Most faeries won't even go there." We have to go - we have to get Ravus's heart. He's going to die if we don't." what are we going to do? Go down there and ask for it?" Pretty much.

He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.

It feels like the whole world has turned upside down. There aren't any more rules. Hey,' I say to Sam, because if the world's gone crazy, then I guess I can do whatever I want. "Guess what? I'm a worker.

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.

I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron's house. I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen. Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster's.

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?

I heard you've been having some problems with your girlfriend." Headmistress Northcutt says. "No," I say. "Not at all." Audrey broke up with me after the winter holiday, exhausted by my moodiness. It's impossible to have problems with a girlfriend who's no longer mine.

She says that what you did was a cry for help." "It was," I say. "That's why I was yelling 'Heeeelp!' I don't really go in for subtlety.

Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

If we have to be cat burglars, I'm going to see what' to steal in the fridge." We're trying to find evidence she's the poisoner. Just a thought before you start putting random things in your mouth." Ruth shrugged and walked past Val.

Great. Lookout. I'm a lookout. Another thing to put on my college applications. What do I do if I see someone?" Val looked back. "I'm not sure, actually.

The more powerful you become, the more others will find ways to master you. They'll do it through those you love and those you hate. They will find the bit and the bridle that fits your mouth and will make you yield.

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.