Thief of Night Quotes

“You are an absolute heart attack of a person, Charlie Hall.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“ No, Charlie wanted to insist. People only love you if you make it worth their while. No one loves you once they see your weaknesses. No one loved your flaws. No one loves your ugly, broken parts. No one love you and expects nothing more than your love in return.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“I’m afraid to lose what little self I have. I am afraid that everything you like in me isn’t me at all.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Do you know the fairy tale about the boy who doesn’t know fear? Its bizarre. A boy who has never been afraid leaves home to seek his fortune and is challenged to spend the night in some haunted house. Many headless ghosts and other things try to scare him to death the way they’ve done to everyone else, but he’s not scared because, well, no fear. He gets his reward and winds up marrying a princess—and on his wedding night, his new wife learns about his lack of fear. To teach him, she pours a bucket of eels on him in their marriage bed. The squirming of the eels is so strange that he shivers and shakes and believes that he has finally felt fear.
Fiona read that to Remy when we were children and I thought it was the weirdest story I’d ever heard. For a long time, I thought eels had something to do with marriage.”
Charlie raised her eyebrows. “So what does it mean?”
“Look, it’s still bizarre. But I think the fairy tale is about how desire is terrifying. Love is terrifying.” He shook his head. “And for someone who has tried not to feel for a long time, it’s threatening. It feels like an attack.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Mark had never seen her as a real con artist, like him. She was a woman and if a woman made a target want them, even love them, that’s what women did, right? It didn’t make her slick the way it did when a beautiful, rogue-hearted man came to town and stole hearts.
Women were supposed to be chameleons, formless and shapeless until the world told them their shape, so it didn’t impress him when she slipped into a role. Maybe he thought all women were con artists.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Maybe she won’t be so mad. I think she’s happy with Bob—”
“The Magic card guy?” Red asked.
It always threw Charlie that Vince had paid attention to the little things. The throwaway comments she made about people or her past. The gossip that flowed around Rapture. She’s never had a boyfriend do that before and it was alarming and gratifying in equal measure. He saw her, but sometimes she felt safer not being seen. Red did it too and it unnerved her all over again.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“The kitchen cabinets were all open, half their contents haphazardly piled into cardboard boxes with wildly random, yet highly specific Sharpie’d labels—TINY UMBRELLAS, MUGS, SPATULA, TONGS & PASTA STRAINER or LEMON SQUEEZER, KNIVES, TIARA & COFFEE GRINDER. Their cat, Lucipurrr, was in the box marked WORM BUCKET, barely visible except for the shine of her green eyes.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“It was a lot easier to seem tough when there was no one watching you lie in bed all day, too depressed to take a shower. To let people believe you were on a bender when you didn’t show up for work instead of having to admit you couldn’t make yourself get up off the couch.
A lot easier to allow yourself to descend into hysterical sobbing when there was no one else to witness it, no less a terrifying Blight. She supposed her own shadow had always been there, though she hadn’t given it much thought.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Then, she leaned forward to kiss him. He kissed her back with an intensity that felt at least partly like relief. Maybe he was nervous too. The thought made her bold. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she gave it a short tug.
He made a sound against her mouth.
"You like that?" A whole year she'd lived with him and hadn't known.
He drew back, looking down at her with a wild intensity. "I-yes." He swallowed whatever else he had been about to say.
"I am going," she told him, sliding her hands over his skin, letting her nails scratch him lightly as she went, "to spend the rest of tonight figuring out everything you like.”
― Holly Black , Thief of Night

“I’m afraid to lose what little self I have left. I am afraid that everything you like in me isn’t me at all.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“You’re young. You probably still think relationships are all about being careful not to bruise one another.” Then she turned the glass to Marni. “You have no excuse.”
“Aren’t they?” Charlie asked. Perhaps, as a dominatrix, this was an area where metaphors about bruising got a little complicated. “Or at least, shouldn’t they be?”
The laugh Odette gave was harsh. “And what happens when you can’t live up to that?”
Charlie’s thoughts shifted to Vince and how careful she’d been around him, how much she tried to hide herself. How thoroughly he’d hidden himself from her. How they might love one another, but never actually knew one another. Then, she thought of Red, and felt out of her depth. “I honestly don’t know.”
Odette sighed. “You imagine yourself like actors, Vaseline on the lens, hiding your flaws. But you should want someone to kiss your scars. Someone who’ll catch your vomit in their hands. Who’ll love you just as much if you get so drunk you piss the bed—or if you need a fucking catheter and a piss bag. True love had to take stink along with sweetness.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“ You don’t have to disappear all the time, she’d told him, and he’s been ready for her to take it back.
What did it mean to live in the margins of life? To be unused to taking up space?”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“People said that there were things money couldn’t buy, but Charlie wasn’t so sure. Sure, you couldn’t buy love, but it was easier to love someone who wasn’t stressed about cash, who could cover the bill at restaurants, who didn’t have to work two jobs to make ends meet. You couldn’t buy health, but there were so many ways that money made it easier to not get sick, and to get better if you were.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“I mean whatever you’re feeling. All the bad bits. You can give them to me.”
“Won’t you feel bad then?” Charlie cut him a look.
He shrugged.
“Do you want to feel the way I do right now?” Her voice cracked and abruptly she was worried she might cry. “Like I’m about to jump out of my skin or throw up or throw things? Like I can’t keep my sister safe? Like everyone believes you want me dead and I’m a fool for letting myself believe otherwise?”
“I don’t want you dead,” he said.
“Good to know,” she told him. “And for your information, whether or not you want to feel all the trash I am feeling right now, you’re not going to get to because it’s my trash and you can’t have it.”
He gave a huff of breath that might have been a laugh. “You are a very strange person, Charlie Hall.”
“Yeah? Well you’re kind of a weirdo yourself.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“I mean whatever you’re feeling. All the bad bits. You can give them to me.”
“Won’t you feel bad then?” Charlie cut him a look.
He shrugged.
“Do you want to feel the way I do right now?” Her voice cracked and abruptly she was worried she might cry. “Like I’m about to jump out of my skin or throw up or throw things? Like I can’t keep my sister safe? Like everyone believes you want me dead and I’m a fool for letting myself believe otherwise?”
“I don’t want you dead,” he said.
“Good to know,” she told him. “And for your information, whether or not you want to feel all the trash I am feeling right now, you’re not going to get to because it’s my trash and you can’t have it.”
He gave a huff of breath that might have been a laugh. “You are a very strange person, Charlie Hall.”
“Yeah? Well you’re kind of a weird yourself.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“ Ring around the gloom, pockets full of moons. Shadows! Shadows! We all fall into doom.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Who wants to be a thing full of holes? A half-woven tapestry? Something poised to unravel? Something that maybe shouldn’t be at all. I’m just the pieces someone else didn’t want. Why would I want to be as I am?”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Malhar: You are a disturbing combination of erudition and instability.
Red: Oh yes. I disturb even myself.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Being naked when Red was always nearby was embarrassing, but nothing next to all the other ways she felt stripped bare. God, it was humiliating to be watched while living her life. Do not look at me while I’m peeing! she’d yell that whole first week after they’d been bound. But that had also meant: Don’t look at me while I’m crying. Look away when I drool in my sleep. Don’t notice all the ways humans are disgusting. Don’t notice all the ways I am human.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“A shuffling on the floorboards behind her made her turn, thrusting out her obsidian dagger and sweeping the flashlight after it.
The beam illuminated a rat, eyes shining with reflected light. It looked as surprised as Charlie felt.
“You should get out of here,” she told it, thinking of all the rat bones on the floor below.
The rodent sniffed the air, still watching her. Its whiskers twitched.
“I know. I should get out of here too,” she continued conversationally. “But I historically only make bad decisions.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night

“Stories were a good place to hide, but he couldn’t stop looking for himself in them.”
― Holly Black, Thief of Night