The Cruel Prince 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

He's flint, you're tinder.

Show your power by appearing powerless.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Sharpen your heart.

Nicasia's wrong about me. I don't desire to do as well in the tournament as one of the fey. I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.

I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Go ahead. Insult me.” His eyebrows go up. “I don’t take commands from mortals,” he says with his customary cruel smile. “So you’re going to say something nice? I don’t think so. Faeries can’t lie.

I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,' Cardan returns.

I like for things to happen, for stories to unfold. And if I can’t find a good enough story, I make one.

I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.

And yet, I don’t regret it now. Having stepped off the edge, what I want to do is fall.

This is absurd. This is awful. This isn’t how people show loyalty. This is epic, epic bullshit.

Guard your mortal heart.

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.

It turns out that having kissed someone, the possibility of kissing hangs over everything, no matter how terrible an idea it was the first time.

What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I’m not?

The world is vicious.' Thomas brushed a lock of hair back from my face, his gaze thoughtful. 'The world is neither kind nor is it cruel. It simply exists. We have the ability to view it however we choose.

He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.

Whoever controls the king, controls the kingdom

We all want stupid things. That doesn't mean we should have them.

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.

She's looking around the forest, as though if she can prove it isn't magic, then nothing else is, either. Which is stupid. All forests are magic.

I'm not a monster, I'd told her, back when I said I would never hurt Oak. But maybe being a monster was my calling.

How will I know when I’ve learned it, since I don’t know it now?” he asks. The question sounds like a riddle. “Come back when returning feels like a hard choice instead of an easy one,” I answer finally.

It’s disturbing to see him like this, behaving as though he might have emotions.

You think I don’t deserve him,” I say to Cardan. He smiles slowly, like the moon slipping beneath the waves of the lake. “Oh no, I think you’re perfect for each other.

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 Cardon's throne. He's trying to take mine.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

Vivi is right; it cost me something to be the way I am. But I do not know what. And I don't know if I can get it back. I don't even know if I want it.

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

There is a pleasure in being with them,” he says. “Taking what we wish, indulging in every terrible thought. There’s safety in being awful.

Mortals are fragile," I say. "Not you," he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. "You never break." Which is ridiculous, as hurt as I am. I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness. Still, I like hearing it. I like everything he's saying all too well. That boy is your weakness.

I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven’t been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.

It’s funny how you get under his skin.” At first, I’m not sure I heard him right. I almost ask whom he’s talking about, because I can’t quite believe he’s admitting that high and mighty Cardan is affected by anything. “Like a splinter?” I say. “Of iron. No one else bothers him quite the way that you do.

If you want my advice,” he says slowly, “love doesn’t grow well, fed on pain. Grant me that I know that at least.

I can feel the moment he gives in and gives up, pulling me to him despite the threat of the knife. He kisses me hard, with a kind of devouring desperation, fingers digging into my hair. Our mouths slide together, teeth over lips over tongues. Desire hits me like a kick to the stomach. It's like fighting, except what we're fighting for is to crawl inside each other's skin.

I thought I was playing the game of pissing off people who hated me already and eating the consequences.

Little did Prince Dain know that my real skill lies in pissing people off.

I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.

Love is a noble cause. How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?

Why am I the way I am?” His tone makes it clear he’s proposing something I might suggest he ask, not really wondering about it. “There are no real answers, Jude. Why was I cruel to Folk? Why was I awful to you? Because I could be. Because I liked it. Because, for a moment, when I was at my worst, I felt powerful, and most of the time, I felt powerless, despite being a prince and the son of the High King of Faerie.

Three is an odd configuration of sisters. There’s always one on the outside.

In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.

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.

Faeries make up for their inability to lie with a panoply of deceptions and cruelties. Twisted words, pranks, omissions, riddles, scandals, not to mention their revenges upon one another for ancient, half-remembered slights. Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.

He was evil. Cruel, capricious, and dangerous as a cobra. A prince of darkness. Completely evil, and completely in love with her.

We may not die from age, but we grow weary with it.

I do not understand why he likes me, but it is exciting to be liked.

When there is a lot of power concentrated in one place, there are plenty of scraps to fight over. If the Court isn’t busy drinking poison, then it’s drinking bile.

...the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.

Cardan’s gaze catches mine, and I can’t help the evil smile that pulls up the corners of my mouth. His eyes are bright as coals, his hatred a living thing, shimmering in the air between us like the air above black rocks on a blazing summer day.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong?

I’d forgotten to keep blasting a song in my mind. I remedied my mistake, but the lyrics to “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” seemed too close to home at the mo-ment. “Culture Club?” Now his mouth curled downward. “And you accuse me of practicing cruel and unusual punishment.

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.

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 in to something like a compliment. 'No,' I say, glad to be annoyed back in to the present. 'Tell me.' 'I cannot,' he says, then frowns.

Every day that I don’t beg Cardan for forgiveness over a feud he started is a day I win. He can humiliate me, but every time he does and I don’t back down, he makes himself less powerful. After all, he’s throwing everything he’s got at someone as weak as I am and it’s not working. He’s going to take himself down.

Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky. Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs. We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.

Get down here before you’re recognized.” “Playing hide-and-seek under the table? Crouching in the dirt? Typical of your kind, but far beneath my dignity.” He laughs unsteadily, like he expects I am going to laugh, too. I don’t. I ball up my fist and punch him in the stomach, right where I know it will hurt. He staggers to his knees. The goblet drops to the dirt, making a hollow clanking sound. “Ow!” he shouts, and lets me tug him under the table.

It is at that unfortunate moment that one of the knights stops me. "You. Mortal girl in the mask," he says. "You smell like blood." I turn. Frustrated and desperate as I am, I blurt out the first thing that comes to me. "Well, I am mortal. And a girl, sir. We bleed every month, just like moon swells.

Cruel Prince James strode into the chamber, his cape flashing behind him and his terrible, terrible mustache askew with rage,” Lucie narrated the moment James walked through the door. “Does it need be said twice that it’s terrible?” James said. “He required a hot beverage to soothe his throat, parched from barking out his wicked commands all day. Tea, he thought, yes, tea and revenge.” “I’ll just go put the kettle on,” James sighed.

I hate you because your father loves you even though you're a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.

I forgive you, but only because you said 'please.'" Smartass, I thought. Then I groaned at the instant chorus of "Please!" mixed with cries for release from Vlad's prisoners. No wonder he got so sick of the word. "I'm only merciful to one person a day," he threw over his shoulder. "As the saying goes, today isn't your day and tomorrow doesn't look good, either.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

No one feels like you do, so every brush of your skin is a cruel reminder of what I’ve lost. I can barely stand the sight of you because you’re more beautiful than I’ve allowed myself to remember, and when I cut that wire off Maximus and smelled you all over him, I wanted to kill him more than I’ve wanted to kill anyone in my life, yet I couldn’t because of my promise to you.” Slow tears continued to trickle down my cheeks, but for a different reason this time. “You care.” The words were whispered with a despairing sort of wonder. He wasn’t willing to rescind his loveless vow, clearly, but I was wrong about the apathy I’d thought he felt. That he admitted all the above was surprising enough; the fact he’d done it within earshot of his pilots was no less than shocking. Vlad grunted. “Don’t worry. I intend to kill them as soon as we land.

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?" [Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]