We prove a bound relating the volume of a curve near a cusp in a complex ball quotient X = B/Γ to its multiplicity at the cusp. There are a number of consequences: we show that for an n-dimensional toroidal compactification X with boundary D, K X +(1−λ)D is ample for λ ∈ (0, (n + 1)/2π), and in particular that K X is ample for n 6. By an independent algebraic argument, we prove that every ball quotient of dimension n 4 is of general type, and conclude that the phenomenon famously exhibited by Hirzebruch in dimension 2 does not occur in higher dimensions. Finally, we investigate the applications to the problem of bounding the number of cusps and to the Green-Griffiths conjecture.