Jess > Jess's Quotes

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you've swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.”
― 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

“I think of his riddle. How do people like us take off our armor?
One piece at a time.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“He's flint, you're tinder.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

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

“His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Seelie and Unseelie, Wild Folk and Shy Folk, I am glad to have you march under my banner, glad of your loyalty, grateful for your honor.” His gaze goes to me. “To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“I want to tell you so many lies”
― Holly Black , The Wicked King

“Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the undersea.
It was yours before I could ever admit it, and yours it shall ever remain.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks.

He hates you, I remind myself.

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”

I feel those words, feel them like a kick to the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can’t tell which of us he’s laughing at.

He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you.

Maybe he hates you the more for it.

After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he’s talking to himself. “If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”

He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Yes, my great villan, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. “And you.” He looks at me, his lips curving in something that’s not quite a smile; it’s more and less than that. “I knew little else, but I always knew you.” And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Sweet Jude, you’re my dearest punishment”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I raise a plastic glass. “To family.”
“And Faerieland,” says Taryn, raising hers.
“And pizza,” says Oak.
“And stories,” says Heather.
“And new beginnings,” says Vivi.
Cardan smiles, his gaze on me. “And scheming great schemes.”
To family and Faerieland and pizza and stories and new beginnings and scheming great schemes. I can toast to that.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing