Literary Birthday – 10 November – Holly Black

Happy Birthday, Holly Black, born 10 November 1971.

Seven Quotes

1. Every hero is the villain of his own story.
2. My dream dinner party is William Butler Yeats who is going to talk to me about poetry, faerie folklore, the Order of the Golden Dawn and the various ladies he’s in love with; Terri Windling, because she is kind and wise and a fabulous writer and editor who I don’t see nearly enough of; and Oscar Wilde because I know he’d be fascinating and I’m sure he would enliven the whole thing with his bon mots.
3. I try to write a thousand words every day. I’ve actually put up my daily word counts online for my last several novels. I do this to keep myself honest, saying exactly when I wrote what part of the book.
4. Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier.
5. Changing is what people do when they have no options left.
6. Librarians are hot. They have knowledge and power over their domain…It is no coincidence how many librarians are portrayed as having a passionate interior, hidden by a cool layer of reserve. Aren’t books like that? On the shelf, their calm covers belie the intense experience of reading one. Reading inflames the soul. Now, what sort of person would be the keeper of such books?
7. We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That’s why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.

Holly Black is an American writer and editor. She is best known for The Spiderwick Chronicles and the Modern Tale of Faerie trilogy. Her 2013 novel, Doll Bones was named a Newbery Medal honor book.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holly_Black_Author_Photo_2020.jpg

AssistantAtHollyBlack, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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