Holly Black

“A man may daydream of how he would spend a million dollars, but playing the same game with a billion dollars sours the fantasy. There are too many possibilities. The house he once wished for with all his heart is suddenly too small. The travel, too cheap. He wanted to visit an island. Now he contemplates buying one.”

“You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it.”

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

“What is it? For what do you scheme? Ethine's death would weigh on you and the stain of her blood would seep into your skin""Do you know what they wish for when they give you the Unseelie crown?" Roiben's tone was soft, like he was telling a secret. Kaye could barely catch his words. "That you be made of ice. What makes you think it matters what I feel? What makes you think I feel anything at all?”

“When we fall that first time, we’re not really inlove 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 andof who we become around her. We’re idiots.”

“You’re a liar, Cassel Sharpe. A lying liar who lies.”

“Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.”

“Reading about Bordertown was the first time I saw people like me in speculative fiction. Messed-up kids, making messsed-up choices. I couldn't be a magician's apprentice or a pig keeper who might or might not be a king's son or a princess with a prophecy hanging over my head. But I could, maybe, somehow, be part of a community of artists who loved magic.”

“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.”

“There is something of yours that i would like to return to you . . . He leaned across the distance between them and caught her mouth with his own.”

“That's the problem with temptation. It's so damn tempting.”

“All friendships are negotiations of power.”

“Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying”

“I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria.But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense.All friendships are negotiations of power.”

“The Big Score.”

“The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You okay?" Anton asks, looking at me like he's trying to figure out if I'm drunk. His plans depend on me. I look as blank as possible and hope that it freaks him out. No point in my being the only miserable one.”

“And you want more holes because you think pain will distract you from all the annoying celebrating? Or because stabbing me will make you feel better?""Something like that." She smiled enigmatically, went into the bathroom, and came out with a wad of cotton balls and a safety pin.”

“I need your help," says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila's, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk.”

“As Val jumped down onto the litter-strewn concrete after them, she thought how insane it was to follow two people she didn't know into the bowels of the subway, but instead of being afraid, she felt glad. She would make all her own decisions now, even if they were ruinous ones. It was the same pleasurable feeling as tearing a piece of paper into tiny, tiny pieces.”

“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.”

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

“As the last Seelie left the hall, Roiben, self-declared King of the Unseelie Court, nearly fell into his throne. Kaye tried to smile at him, but he was not looking at her. He was staring out across the brugh with eyes the color of falling ash.Corny had not stopped laughing.”

“You're not the way everyone says you are," Kaye said, looking at him so fiercely that he couldn't meet her gaze. "I know you're not.""You know nothing of me," he said. He wanted to punish her for the trust he saw on her face, to raze it from her now so that he would be spared the sight of her when that trust was betrayed.He wanted to tell her he found her impossibly alluring, at least half enchanted, body bruised and scratched, utterly unaware she would not live past dawn. He wondered what she would say in the face of that.”

“So, what did you think of the Unseelie Court?"A slow, wicked smile spread on his face. "Oh, Kaye," he breathed. "It was marvelous. It was perfect."She narrowed her gaze. "I was joking. They were killing things, Corny. For fun. Things like us."He didn't seem to hear her, his eyes looking past her to the bright window. "There was this knight, not yours. He ... " Corny shivered and seemed to abruptly change the direction of his sentence. "He had a cloak all lined with thorns.""I saw him talking to the Queen," Kaye said.Corny shrugged off his jacket. There were long scratches along his arms."What happened to you?"Corny's smile widened, but his gaze was locked in some memory. He shifted it back to her. "Well, obviously I got inside the cloak."She snorted. "What a euphemism.”

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

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

“You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.”

“If you are a crazy person who needs to have clandestine meetings, then, just like in real estate, what matters most is location, location, location.”

“I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they trash in your hands as though with an excess of passion.”

“She’s an old lady,” Barron says. “And she’s been locked up for years. Let her have some fun. She needs to blow off steam. Seduce old dudes. Lose money at canasta.”

“Eu não quero ser um monstro, mas talvez seja tarde demais para ser outra coisa.”

“There's nothing quite as funny as someone else's misery - Cassel Sharpe”

“Cassel, she said, you want to know how to be the most charming guy anyone's ever met? Remind them of their favorite person. Everyone's favorite person is their own damn self.”

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

“The inside is packed with people. Lots of them crowding the bar, passing drinks back for people to carry to tables. A bunch of guys are pouring shots of vodka."To Zacharov!" one toasts."To open hearts and open bars!" calls another."And open legs," says Anton.”

“Gifts are very useful to con men. Gifts create a feeling of debt, an itchy anxiety that the recipient is eager to be rid of by repaying. So eager, in fact, that people will often overpay just to be relieved of it. A single spontaneously given cup of coffee can make a person feel obligated to sit through a lecture on a religion they don't care about. The gift of a tiny, wilted flower can make the recipient give to a charity they dislike. Gifts place such a heavy burden that even throwing away the gift doesn't remove the debt. Even if you hate coffee, even if you didn't want that flower, once you take it, you want to give something back. Most of all, you want to dismiss obligation.”

“You're as cowardly as a g------ weasel. You know that? A weasel. That's what you are.""You don't know me," I say, spitting blood onto the dirt. I can't help it. I start to laugh. "And you obviously don't know much about weasels, either.”

“Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I grab a chair. "I don't mean to pry," I say, "but we're in a hospital. You sure you're fine?"She sighs heavily. "No getting anything past you, huh?""I also often notice when water is wet. I have a keen detective's mind like that.”

“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.”

“Everyone danced -- sweaty bodies packed tight, drunk with sound.”

“Really it was a pretty good talk. About the best I could expect from my sociopath amnesiac jerk of an older brother.”

“It's not that I want you to be a certain way--don't you want a boyfriend?""Why bother with that? Let's find incubi.""Incubi?" "Demons. Plural. Like octopi. And we're much more likely to find them"--her voice dropped conspiratorially--"while swimming naked in the Atlantic a week before Halloween than practically anywhere else I can think of.”