And in some way, Clary thought, he meant it, meant his gratitude. He had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between force and cooperation, between fear and willingness, between love and torture. And with that realization came a rush of numbness—what was the point of hating Valentine for being a monster when he didn’t even know he was one?

The way he looked at you. I got it then. He loved you, and it was killing him. He won't get over you, Clary, he can't.

I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. i is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me.

You don't understand,' she said, and there was a puzzling trace of resentment in her voice. 'Children never do. The love a parent has for a child, there's nothing else like it. No other love so consuming.

I think I gave Alec a complex about what kind of fighter he was, just because he wanted to live.

In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn't matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did.

To love is to destroy, to destroy is to love. -Jace Herondale