Black Folks Quotes

If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.

Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.

By you, I am forever undone.

Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.

If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.

Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment. “No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.” "I can't.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.

If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.

Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips." His eyes are black with desire. "By you, I am forever undone.

Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

It’s you I love,” he says. “I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.

Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.

I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.

Let's have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.

He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.” I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?” He grins up at me. “They missed.

Kill him before he makes you love him.

So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.” I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.

Jude, you can't really think I don't know it's you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.

Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.

There’s always something left to lose.

I missed you," I whisper against his skin and feel dizzy with the intimacy of the admission, feel more naked than when he could see every inch of me. "In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you." "My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned.

Sweet Jude, you’re my dearest punishment

The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.

And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the undersea. It was yours before I could ever admit it, and yours it shall ever remain.

I want to tell you so many lies

I hate you," I breathed into his mouth. "I hate you so much that sometimes I can't think of anything else.

That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down

I love my parents' murderer; I suppose I could love anyone.

Yes, my great villan, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can

This is my room,” he points out, affronted. “And that’s my wife.” “So you keep telling everyone,” the Bomb says. “But I am going to take out her stitches, and I don’t think you want to watch that.” “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe he’d like to hear me scream.” “I would,” Cardan says, standing. “And perhaps one day I will.

Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.

No, I won’t help you. No, I won’t hear you explain why I should. It really is a magical word: no. You say whatever bullshit you want and I just say no.

You really do want me,' I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. 'And you hate it.

I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.

Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god… Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment

I think of his riddle. How do people like us take off our armor? One piece at a time.

Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.

Pain makes you strong, Madoc once told me, making me lift a sword again and again. Get used to the weight.

There you are," Cardan says as I take my place beside him. "How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.

But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you've swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.

Tell me again what you said at the revel,” he says, climbing over me, his body against mine. “What?” I can barely think. “That you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me that you hate me.” “I hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” He kisses me harder. “I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.

The odd thing about ambition is this: You can acquire it like a fever, but it is not so easy to shed.

The point of a fight is not to have a good fight, it’s to win.

Show your power by appearing powerless.

He's flint, you're tinder.

Come be angry at a nearer distance

I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?” “Because they could kill you!” “They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.

But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.

You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring. The first lesson is to make yourself that strong.

Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.

We don't need to be good. But let's try to be fair.

Perhaps you could just allow yourself to be rescued," Cardan says. "For once.

The disturbing thing about Cardan is how well he plays the fool to disguise his own cleverness.

I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. “And you.” He looks at me, his lips curving in something that’s not quite a smile; it’s more and less than that. “I knew little else, but I always knew you.” And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

My sweet nemesis , how glad I am that you returned

Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.

You don't know how long I've waited to hear those words," he says. "You don't want me dead.

I wasn't kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn't sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.

There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man.

That's what mortal means," I say with a sigh that I don't have to fake. "We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.

Your ridiculous family might be surprised to find that not everything is solved by murder,” Locke calls after me. “We would be surprised to find that,” I call back.

Having a heart is terrible, but you need one anyway.

Mortals are fragile,' I say. 'Not you,' he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. 'You never break.

And the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I've ever liked anyone and that of all the things he's ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

I get why he chose her. I just wish she had chosen me.

It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes.

No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.

Once upon a time, there was a human girl stolen away by faeries, and because of that, she swore to destroy them.

The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.

That boy is your weakness.

Cardan grins at me as though we've been great friends all our lives. I forgot how charming he can be--and how dangerous that is.

A heart of stone can still be broken.

You don’t think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?

I am the Queen of Elfhame. Even though I am the queen in exile, I am still the queen. And that means Madoc isn’t just trying to take Cardan’s throne. He’s trying to take mine.

Seelie and Unseelie, Wild Folk and Shy Folk, I am glad to have you march under my banner, glad of your loyalty, grateful for your honor.” His gaze goes to me. “To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.

Maybe it isn't the worst thing to want to be loved, even if you're not. Even if it hurts. Maybe being human isn't always being weak. Maybe it was the shame that was the problem.

Only idiots aren’t scared of things that are scary.

Watching my back is the perfect opportunity to stick a knife in it.

He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.

I raise a plastic glass. “To family.” “And Faerieland,” says Taryn, raising hers. “And pizza,” says Oak. “And stories,” says Heather. “And new beginnings,” says Vivi. Cardan smiles, his gaze on me. “And scheming great schemes.” To family and Faerieland and pizza and stories and new beginnings and scheming great schemes. I can toast to that.

I have heard that for mortals, the feeling of falling in love is very like the feeling of fear. Your heart beats fast. Your senses are heightened. You grow light-headed, maybe even dizzy.

It's shocking," he says, as though he's giving me some great compliment. "I know humans can lie, but to watch you do it is incredible. Do it again.

Well, even if the serpent bites off your head,” says Tatterfell, “the rest of you will still look good.” “That’s the spirit,” I tell her.

You have only seen the least of what I can do.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.

I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.

He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.

Clap her in chains," says Randalin. Never have I so wished there was a way for me to show I was telling the truth. But there isn't. No oath of mine carries any weight. I feel a guard's hand close on my arm. Then Cardan's voice comes. "Do not touch her." A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgement on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don't even have the strength to fight back. "Whatever can you mean?" Randalin says. "She's-" "She is my wife," Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. "The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.

His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks. He hates you, I remind myself. “Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.” I feel those words, feel them like a kick to the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can’t tell which of us he’s laughing at. He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you the more for it. After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he’s talking to himself. “If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.” He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.

What they don’t realize is this: Yes, they frighten me, but I have always been scared, since the day I got here. I was raised by the man who murdered my parents, reared in a land of monsters. I live with that fear, let it settle into my bones, and ignore it. If I didn’t pretend not to be scared, I would hide under my owl-down coverlets in Madoc’s estate forever. I would lie there and scream until there was nothing left of me. I refuse to do that. I will not do that.

I walk through the black Indiana night, under a ceiling of stars, and think about the phrase "elegance and euphoria," and how it describes exactly what I feel with Violet. For once, I don't want to be anyone but Theodore Finch, the boy she sees. He understands what it is to be elegant and euphoric and a hundered different people most of them flawed and stupid, part asshole, part screwup, part freak, a boy who wants to be easy for the folks around him so that he doesn't worry them and, most of all, easy for himself. A boy who belongs - here in the world, here in his own skin. He is exactly who I want to be and what I want my epitaph to say: The Boy Violet Markey Loves.