Black Heart Quotes

“She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“That’s family for you. Can’t live with them, can’t murder them.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Mine. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it's not going to encourage anyone's betterment.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Some promises aren’t worth keeping.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Love changes us, but we change how we love too.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.”

“Not ever?” I ask.

Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Ruthless. That’s my girl.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“She wants me to take out Patton.”

Barron’s brows draw together. “Take out? As in transform him?”

“No,” I say. “As in take out to dinner. She thinks we’d make a good couple.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Refills are free,” the waitress tells us with a frown, like she’s hoping we’re not the kind of people who ask for endless refills. I am already pretty sure we are exactly those people.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“The problem with cell phones is that you can’t slam them down into a cradle when you hang up. Your only option is to throw them, and if you do, they just skitter across the floor and crack their case. It’s not satisfying at all.

I close my eyes and bend down to pick up the pieces.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“You can't go around making plans that have you getting killed as a by-product. Eventually one of them is going to work.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“That's the problem with temptation. It's so damn tempting.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Would you?” Mom smiles and touches my hair, pushing it back from my forehead. I let her, but I grit my teeth. Her bare fingers brush my skin. I am thankful when none of my amulets crack. “Do you know what the Turkish say about coffee? It should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. Isn’t that beautiful? My grandfather told me that when I was a little girl, and I never forgot it. Unfortunately, I still like my milk.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“Don’t.” She looks directly into my eyes. After a month of being forced to avoid her, I feel stripped bare by her gaze. “You can be as much of a charming bastard as you want, but you’re never going to bullshit your way into my heart again.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“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.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart