Tithe Quotes

“She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Kaye: You know what the sun looks like?
Janet: No, What?
Kaye: Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water.
Janet: That's gross, Kaye.
Kaye: And the moon is just watching. She's just watching him die. She must have driven him to it.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Crippled things are always more beautiful. It's the flaw that brings out beauty.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

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

“So what are you really wearing?" The words left her mouth before she could consider them. She winced.
He didn't seem to mind; in fact, he flashed her one of his brief smiles. "And if I said nothing at all?"
"Then I would point out that sometimes, if you look at something out of the corner of your eye, you can see right through glamour," she returned.
That brought surprised laughter. "What a relief to us both then that I am actually wearing exactly what you saw me in this afternoon. Although one might point out that in that outfit, your last concern should be my modesty.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“There is something of yours I would like to return to you."
"What?"
He leaned across the distance between them and caught her mouth with his own. Her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted easily as she felt the kiss sizzling through her nerves, rendering her thoughts to smoke.
"Um..." Kaye stepped make, a little unsteadily. "Why does that belong to me?"
"That was the kiss I stole from you when you were enchanted," he said patiently.
"Oh...well, what if I didn't want it?"
"You don't?"
No," she said, letting a grin spread across her face, hoping her mother would take her time of the drive over. "I'd like you to take it back again, please."
"I am your servant," the King of the Unseelie Court said, his lips a moment from her own, "Consider it done.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Kiss my ass Rath Roiben Rye”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“She suddenly understood why she had let him kiss her in the diner, why she had wanted him at all.

She wanted to control him.

He was every arrogant boyfriend that had treated her mother badly. He was every boy that told her she was too freaky, who had laughed at her, or just wanted her to shut up and make out. He was a thousand times less real than Roiben.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“It's starting to sink in," Corny said. "I can almost look at you without wanting to bang my head against the wall.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Waves tossed themselves against the shore, dragging grit and sand between their nails as they were slowly pulled back out to sea.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Nevermore," Lolli said. "That's what Luis calls it, because there are three rules: Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Everyone danced -- sweaty bodies packed tight, drunk with sound.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“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.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle. She figured that would be a good test for how drunk Ellen was--see if she would swallow a butt whole”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“I thought weirdness was a good thing. I don't mean that defensively, either. I thought it was something to be cultivated.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Secrets lie in the entrails of things, in the dregs.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“Kaye watched as he calmed somewhat, thinking that she should stop trying to anticipate what was going to happen next. After all, when you were already in a slippery place, reality-wise, you couldn’t afford to assume things would be straight forward from here on in.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“they seemed like talismans that might actually keep the monsters at bay. Until she realized that she was one of the monsters.”
― Holly Black, Tithe

“And now she was sixteen and felt like she had no imagination left.”
― Holly Black, Tithe