Holly Black

“She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone -- desire so acute that it became despair.”

“I'm sorry,' she said to each of the dead as she unzipped and unfastened their things, 'I'm sorry Courtney. I'm sorry Marcus. I'm sorry Rachel. I'm sorry Jon. I'm sorry I'm alive and you're dead. I'm sorry I was asleep. I'm sorry I didn't save you and now I'm taking your things. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“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.”

“Into every generation comes a vampire.”

“Her tragedy, if she had one, was to be as normal and average as any child ever born.”

“The only way to end grief was to go through it.”

“Baby," she says in a harsh whisper, "in this world, lots of people will try to grind you down. They need you to be small so they can be big. You let them think whatever they want, but you make sure you get yours. You get yours.”

“I will guard you from Death, for I have no fear of him.”

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

“Oh- and grab the plastic bag over by my suitcase."I slug down the last of the coffee and get up. The bag contains panty hose. I put them on her desk."They're for you.""You want me to look homeless, desperate, but also kind of fabulous?”

“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.”

“People are fragile. They die of mistakes, of overdoses, of sickness. But mostly they die of Death.”

“Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other's arms.”

“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.”

“I survive at the edge of friends circles.”

“The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.”

“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.”

“They wore their strange beauty like war paint.”

“If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you."Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone.”

“We all wind up drawn to what we're afraid of, drawn to try to find a way to make ourselves safe from a thing by crawling inside of it, by loving it, by becoming it.”