Top 283 Quotes & Sayings by Holly Black

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Holly Black.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Holly Black is an American writer and editor best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Her most recent work is the New York Times bestselling young adult Folk of the Air series. She is also well known for The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series of children's fantasy books she created with writer and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and her debut trilogy of young adult novels officially called the Modern Faerie Tales. Black has won an Eisner Award, a Lodestar Award, a Award, a Nebula Award, and a Newbery honor.

American - Writer | Born: November 10, 1971

Source: Wikipedia

There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.'

Holly Black

Everything scares me. I'm very easily frightened. But the thing that scares me most is zombies. I really, really don't like zombies.

Holly Black

I've loved vampires for a very long time. In eighth grade, I guess, my research paper was on vampires.

Holly Black

I wrote a book called 'Doll Bones', which was another middle-grade book, and when I was writing it, I needed a place in the U.S. that made bone china. And there are only two places in the U.S. that make bone china. They made it by grinding down actual cow bones. It was a plot point. It was a creepy doll book.

Holly Black

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

Holly Black

'Twilight' passed like a fever through the sophisticated reader and the unsophisticated reader alike. People devoured those books in single sittings, over weekends, with a kind of raw intensity that is rare.

Holly Black

I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times.

Holly Black

I think there are a lot of really positive aspects to social media for novelists. Even though our work is pretty solitary, through Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram and blogging in general, we're better able to connect directly with readers.

Holly Black

I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language.

Holly Black

Into every generation comes a vampire.

Holly Black

Faeries are associated with wild untamed nature, with art, and with death - so the folklore is rich with different stories to explore.

Holly Black

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

Holly Black

In the older folklore, faeries were frightening beings. In fact, it was such a bad idea to get their attention that people would use flattering euphemisms for them, such as 'the people of peace,' 'the little people,' and 'the good neighbors.'

Holly Black

When we talk about good books, we often talk about good sentences, but what we rarely talk about is reader pleasure. Yet it is reader pleasure that is going to make a book break out into the kind of success that makes it into a household name.

Holly Black

One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it.

Holly Black

Writers usually don't get to pick our own covers. I know it's surprising to hear that.

Holly Black

When I was a kid in the U.S., 'Doctor Who' wasn't really on, but you would occasionally catch an episode. Different stations did marathons.

Holly Black

I really love the idea of the poetically mad - the character that is imbued with the romantic madness. Like River from 'Firefly' or Drusilla from 'Buffy.' Someone dangerously unhinged, where you're really not sure they're going to be reliable minute-to-minute.

Holly Black

'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.'

Holly Black

I loved Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat'. I found a copy of 'Interview' when I was in seventh grade at a garage sale for 25 cents. It had a crazy cover.

Holly Black

Growing up, my mom was a painter, my best friend was a painter, my husband is a painter. For a long time I knew artists, and I didn't know any writers.

Holly Black

The problem with faerie gifts is that they always come with a price, which is why they are made by the desperate and the foolish.

Holly Black

One of the great things about writing middle-grade books is that it's really a nice break, when you're writing super intense stuff like 'Coldtown', to be able to write something a little lighter - calm down and do something different.

Holly Black

I think there's a reason that horror appeals to teens. There's a lot of useful lessons to take away from reading horror. We get to be scared in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can put the book down if we get too scared, and no one will ever know if we decide not to pick it up again.

Holly Black

Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.

Holly Black

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.

Holly Black

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

Holly Black

Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research.

Holly Black

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

Holly Black

What I've always loved about faeries is the way that they, unlike so many other supernatural creatures, are not human and have never been human. They have different customs and different taboos, and woe to anyone who breaks them.

Holly Black

Vampires aren't made - they're just born that way, and no one knows why. They're sort of a race unto themselves.

Holly Black

I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things.

Holly Black

That’s family for you. Can’t live with them, can’t murder them.

Holly Black

I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price.” “Not usually so immediately.” I shake my head. “You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They’ll arrest you.” His grin widens. “I like handcuffs.” I groan. “There is something seriously wrong with you.” “Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn’t fix.

Holly Black

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.

Holly Black

Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of thing long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.

Holly Black

I envy what I fear and hate what I envy.

Holly Black

It's the flaw that brings out the beauty.

Holly Black

Isn't every hero aware of all the terrible reason they did those good deeds?" Aware of every mistake they ever made and how good people got hurt because of their decisions? Don't they recall the moments they weren't heroic at all? The moments where their heroism led to more deaths than deliberate villainy ever could?

Holly Black

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone’s watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he’s actually sawing a girl in half. You think he’s doing one trick when he’s actually doing another. You think that I’m dying, but I’m laughing at you.

Holly Black

Love changes us, but we change how we love too.

Holly Black

If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.

Holly Black

Every hero is the villain of his own story.

Holly Black

You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only thing I chose for myself. The only thing I want.

Holly Black

Changing is what people do when they have no options left.

Holly Black

Mutually assured destruction.

Holly Black

She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

Holly Black

Poisonous jealousy thrummed through my veins.

Holly Black

I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING.

Holly Black

She knew she shouldn't feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.

Holly Black

I'm afraid my voice is going to break. I am afraid she is going to hear how much this hurts.

Holly Black

Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.

Holly Black

When you don't know what you're searching for, you have to look absolutely everywhere.

Holly Black

The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.

Holly Black

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.

Holly Black

Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.

Holly Black

People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.

Holly Black

Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.

Holly Black

We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.

Holly Black

I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy.

Holly Black