Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

It's Simon, he's missing." Ahh." said Magnus delicately "Missing what exactly?" Missing!" Jace repeated "As in gone, absent, notable for his lack of presence, disappeared

She felt dirty all over and looking over Sebastian, sweat on his brow and his naked torso barely covered by the sheets, she had to swallow back bile at what she'd just done.

there is a fine line between sarcasm and hostility, you seemed to have crossed it. What's up?

She had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each one of them from the other.

He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it." Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last.

Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us.