Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy — just different. There's nothing wrong with being different.

Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don’t have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing.

For five years it had been his absolute truth. Jem and Will. Will and Jem. Will Herondale lives, therefore Jem Carstairs lives also.

The grandeur of the Institute never failed to impress Magnus - the way it towered high and mighty above everything else, timeless and unmoving in its Gothic disapproval of all that was modern and changeable.

Her throat ached: adoration, heartbreak, in equal measure. “Kiss me,” she said. “Please.

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

Life could not be entirely devoted to debauchery and monkeys. Magnus had to finance all the drinking somehow.