Cassandra Clare

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures an...”

“Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.”

“It means 'Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234'.”

“Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. (Jace Wayland)”

“It's all right to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.”

“Mom. I have something to tell you. I’m undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But I’m here to tell you that undead are just like you and me … well, okay. Possibly more like me than you.”

“Declarations of love amuse me. Especially when unrequited.”

“I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass.”

“Usually I'm remarkably good natured. Try me on a day that doesn't end in y.”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

“A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance covers?”

“There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it.”

“And now I’m looking at you,” he said, “and you’re asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. I never dared give much of myself to anyone before – bits of myself to the Lightwoods, to Isabel...”

“The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.”

“If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?”

“I'll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from 'almost extinct' to 'not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.' Will that make you happy?”

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.”

“People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but its the way you live your life that matters.”

“Tess, Tess, Tessa. Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isn’t it – a heart ringing – but when you touch me that is what it is like: as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins a...”

“The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

“Ah,” said a voice from the doorway, “having your annual ‘everyone thinks Will is a lunatic’ meeting, are you? “It’s biannual,” said Jem. “And no, this is not that meeting.”

“If there were such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood.”

“I adore Wilkie Collins,” Tessa cried. “Oh—Armadale! And The Woman in White … Are you laughing at me?” “Not at you,” said Will, grinning, “more because of you. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited over books before. You’d think they were diamonds.” “Well, they are, aren’t they? Isn’t there anything...”

“Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”

“"Orange is not the color of seduction, Christopher. Orange is the color of despair, and pumpkins."”

“He gazed amusedly down the table at Tessa. “You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” he said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say.” Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. “No. No mark.” He g...”

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and then throw it in the face of the person who gave you the lemons until they give you the oranges you originally asked for.”

“Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to...”

“Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy w...”

“They’re not hideous,” said Tessa. Will blinked at her. “What?” “Gideon and Gabriel,” said Tessa. “They’re really quite good-looking, not hideous at all.” “I spoke,” said Will, in sepulchral tones, “of the pitch-black inner depths of their souls.” Tessa snorted. “And what color do you suppose the inn...”

“Black hair and blue eyes are my favorite combination.”

“It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.”

“They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite”

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.”

“And next time you're planning to injure yourself to get me attention, just remember that a little sweet talk works wonders.”

“My rapier wit hides my inner pain.”

“She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always ph...”

“When you love someone, you don't have a choice. Love takes your choices away. - Clary Fray”

“My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health.”

“There are memories that time does not erase... Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”

“Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side.”

“One does no question miracles, or complain that they are no constructed perfectly to one's liking.”

“Clary, Despite everything, I can't bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more then I can bear the thought of leaving you forever. And though I have no choice about the one, at least I can choose about the other. I'm leaving you our family ring because you have as much right to it as...”

“Astriola. That IS demon pox. You had evidence that demon pox existed and you didnt mention it to me! Et tu, Brute!' He rolled up the paper and hit Jem over the head with it.”

“But you hate poetry! Yes, but you make me want to write it.”

“Even in half demon hunter clothes, Clary thought, he looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets. Jace on the other hand, looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house and burn it down just for kicks.”

“You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carr...”

“Oh, what is brighter than the light? What is darker than the night? What is keener than an axe? What is softer than melting wax? Truth is brighter than the light, Falsehood darker than the night. Revenge is keener than an axe, And love is softer than melting wax.”

“"Ah, Magnus Bane," said Matthew. "My personal hero." "Indeed, you once described him as 'Oscar Wilde if he had magic powers,'" said James.”

“He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way she was looking at him - she could read what was i...”

“I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that”

“Nobody sells books like J.K. Rowling. We have a rule in publishing: Never compare anything to 'Harry Potter' because it's like lightning in a bottle.”

“Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.”

“Whatever you are physically...male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy--all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.”

“Sebastian just smiled. “I could hear your heart beating,” he said softly. “When you were watching me with Valentine. Did it bother you?” “That you seem to be dating my dad?”

“Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.”

“She was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who cared whether she lived or died. Sometimes the horror of that thought threatened to overwhelm her and plunge her down into a bottomless darkness from which there would be no return. If no one in the entir...”

“Well,” Tessa said, sighting along the line of the knife, “you behave as if you dislike me. In fact, you behave as if you dislike us all.” “I don’t,” Gabriel said. “I just dislike him.” He pointed at Will. “Dear me,” said Will, and he took another bite of his apple. “Is it because I’m better-looking...”

“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”

“to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

“Enormous? Did you just call me FAT? I am not fat. - Jace”

“Alec’s friends were gathered all around him, and his family, and it was one of those moments when he remembered the desperate loneliness of when he was younger, hopelessly torn between fearing for what he might never have, and what he might lose. Alec secured his hold on Magnus’s waist and felt a sm...”

“I just don't see why the past has to matter.”

“He knew in the way that she was a part of him, the way her breathing was his breathing, and her dreams were his dreams, and her blood was his blood, and when her heart stopped he knew that his would too, and he would be glad, because he wouldn’t want to live one second in a world that didn’t have he...”

“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”

“She opened her mouth to answer, but he was already kissing her. She had kissed him so many times—soft gentle kisses, hard and desperate ones, brief brushes of the lips that said good-bye, and kisses that seemed to go on for hours—and this was no different. The way the memory of someone who had once...”

“There were valuable first editions of books in the enormous library, most of them had been scribbled in by some idiot named Will H.”

“The best lies are based on the truth, at least in part”

“She soared above the ground, and he kept her tethered to the earth. Without him she would be lost among the clouds.”

“He dropped his voice, so low that Tessa wasn’t sure if what he said next was real or part of the dream darkness rising to claim her, though she fought against it. “I’ve never minded it,” he went on. “Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not be truly lost if one knew one’s own heart. B...”