Sometimes minor characters are based on people I know, on friends of mine. But I'm not writing a thinly veiled version of my own life.

Five," she said. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, but her gaze was steady. "Five?" Gabriel echoed blankly. "My rating," she said, and smiled at him. "Your skill and technique may, perhaps, require work, but the native talent is certainly there. What you require is practice." "And you are willing to be my tutor?" "I should be very insulted if you chose another," Cecily said, and leaned up to kiss him again.

Keeping demons from this world is your mandate, a mandate from heaven. And a mandate from heaven isn't something you can just ignore.

Of course he loves me. I’m his sister.” “Blood isn’t love,” said Magnus, and his voice was bitter.

Hey Baby. Baby? You're kidding me, right? I was trying it out. No? No.

It is hard to think of something as a gift when you have been tormented and imprisoned for it.

Whatever the Clave was discussing, the Council meeting was dragging on brutally late. “But he knows New York. He doesn’t know Alicante—