summer > summer's Quotes

“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“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

“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“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

“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

“I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“There’s always something left to lose.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“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

“That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“You really do want me,' I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. 'And you hate it.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

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

“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“The odd thing about ambition is this: You can acquire it like a fever, but it is not so easy to shed.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?”

“Because they could kill you!”

“They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“We don't need to be good. But let's try to be fair.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

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

“Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

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

“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

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

“If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I want to tell you so many lies”
― 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