Lydia

“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

“Stories can justify anything. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn’t matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn’t. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

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

“Playing the villain was the only thing he’d ever really excelled at.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories