Quotes from Doll Bones

“I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“There’s people who do things and people who never do—who say they will someday, but they just don’t. I want to go on a quest. I’ve always wanted to go on a quest. And now that I have one, I’m not backing down from it. I’m not going home until it’s complete.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“I thought you needed to be tougher. But I've been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“If they were real, then maybe the world was big enough to have magic in it. And if there was magic — even bad magic, and Zach knew it was more likely that there was bad magic than any good kind — then maybe not everyone had to have a story like his father's, a story like the kind all the adults he knew told, one about giving up and growing bitter.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“It's not fair. We had a story, and our story was important. And I hate that both of you can just walk away and take part of my story with you and not even care. I hate that you can do what you're supposed to do and I can't. I hate that you're going to leave me behind. I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like dying. It feels like each of you is being possessed and I'm next.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“I hate that you can do what you're supposed to do and I can't. I hate that you're going to leave me behind. I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like dying. It feels like each one of you is being possessed and I'm next.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“Did you know that bone china had real bones in it?” Poppy said, tapping a porcelain cheek. “Her clay was made from human bones. Little-girl bones. That hair threaded through the scalp is the little girl’s hair. And the body of the doll is filled with her leftover ashes.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who'd gone before those heroes, about whether they'd been at each other's throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren't going to make it, weren't going to beat those long odds--that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“Adventuring turned out to be boring. Zach thought back to all the fantasy books he'd read where a team of questers traveled overland, and realized a few things. First he'd pictured himself with a loyal steed that would have done most of the walking, so he hadn't anticipated the blister forming on his left heel or the tiny pebble that seemed to have worked its way under his sock, so that even when he stripped off his sneaker he couldn't find it.

He hadn't thought about how hot the sun would be either. When he put together his bunch of provisions, he never thought about bringing sunblock. Aragorn never wore sunblock. Taran never wore sunblock. Percy never wore sunblock. But despite all that precedent for going without, he was pretty sure his nose would be lobster-red the next time he looked in the mirror.

He was thirsty, too, something that happened a lot in books, but his dry throat bothered him more than it had ever seemed to bother any character.

And, unlike in books where random brigands and monsters jumped out just when things got unbearably dull, there was nothing to fight except for the clouds of gnats, several of which Zach was pretty sure he'd accidentally swallowed.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“Protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“He liked the way the story unfolded as he wrote, liked the way the answers just came to him sometimes, out of the blue, like they were true things just waiting to be discovered by him.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“Poppy used to share the room with her older sister, and piles of he sister's outgrown clothes still remained spread out in drifts, along with a collection of used makeup and notebooks covered in stickers and scrawled with lyrics. A jumbled of her sister's old Barbies were on top of a bookshelf, waiting for Poppy to try and fix their melted arms and chopped hair. The bookshelves were overflowing with fantasy paperbacks and overdue library books, some of them on Greek myths, some on mermaids, and a few on local hauntings. The walls were covered in posters-Doctor Who, a cat in a bowler hat, and a giant map of Narnia.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“Quests are supposed to change us.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

“A sudden gust of wind made the branches outside shake and jitter. He couldn’t help imagining the long, bony fingers of the trees scraping against the glass. When he was a little kid, he’d had a firm belief in universally observed monster rules. He’d been sure, for example, that if he kept all parts of himself on the mattress and shrouded beneath blankets, if he kept his eyes closed, and if he pretended to be asleep, then he’d be safe. He didn’t know where he’d gotten the idea from. He did remember his mother saying he’d smother himself if he kept sleeping with his head under the comforter. Then one night—quite randomly—he fell asleep with his head above the covers like a normal person, and no monster got him. Over time he got spottier about observing his safety precautions, until he routinely slept with an arm dangling off the side of his bed and his feet kicked free of the sheets. But right then, at the sound of the wind, for one panicky moment, all he wanted was to burrow under the blankets and never come out. Tap. Tap.”
― Holly Black, quote from Doll Bones

About the author

Popular quotes

“Love for others can make even the scaredest of souls become brave in the face of danger.”
― Chanda Hahn, quote from Forever

“Qu'est-ce que donc que la vie humaine si ce n'est un collier de blessures que l'on porte autour de son cou? A quoi sert d'aller ainsi dans les jours, les mois, les années, toujours plus faible, toujours meurtri?”
― Philippe Claudel, quote from La petite fille de Monsieur Linh

“So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days."
"I do," Zuzana agreed. "I swear I hate more poeple every day. Everyone annoys me. If I'm like this now, what am I going to be like when I'm old?"
"You'll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony."
"Nah. BBs just rile 'em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Daughter of Smoke and Bone

“What a company I ended up with,’ Geralt continued, shaking his head. ‘Brothers in arms! A team of heroes! What have I done to deserve it? A poetaster with a lute. A wild and lippy half-dryad, half-woman. A vampire, who’s about to notch up his fifth century. And a bloody Nilfgaardian who insists he isn’t a Nilfgaardian.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Baptism of Fire

“Maybe forgiveness was giving the past less power to hurt me. Or even building new memories that were stronger than the painful ones.”
― Courtney C. Stevens, quote from The Lies About Truth

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.