Cassandra Clare · 61 pages
Rating: (10.3K votes)
“How can you not care?"
"Practice," Magnus said, looking back to his book and turning the page.”
“Nothing is permanent," Magnus said. "I know this from experience. But you can get new things. You can meet new people. You can go on.”
“Magnus placed an order with the room service, who had by now stopped questioning Mr. Bane's unusual needs for things like twenty-four plates of scrambled eggs and “enough coffee to fill one of your larger bathtubs”.”
“You are aware that the sale of liquore is currently against the law." Edgar went on, "but I suppose that is why you enjoy it."
"Everyone should have a hobby or two," Magnus said. "Mine just happen to include illegal trade, drinking and carousing. I've heard of worse."
"We tend not to have time for hobbies."
Shadowhunters. Always better than you.”
“So, what are you?"
"What I am is someone who doesn't want you to jump out of the window. The rest are details.”
“Come with me."
"Come with you? To Pandemonium? To the Void? And here I thought that my invitation to summer in New Jersey was the worst I had ever received.”
“You think that's the solution to everything, don't you, Bane? Drinking and dancing and making love... but I tell you this, something is coming, and we'd be fools to ignore it."
"When have I ever claimed not to be a fool?”
“What is Aldous capable of?"
"Aldous is two thousands years old. He's capable of anything."
"Aldous Nix is two thousands years old?"
"So, I've heard. He doesn't invite me to his birthday parties.”
“What are you?
The voice came from nowhere. It was in the room. It was outside. It was in Magnus's head.
"A warlock," Magnus answered. "And what are you?"
We are many.
"Please do not say you are a legion. Someone's taken that."
Do you make mirth from mundane scriptures, warlock?
"Just breaking the ice”
“And who are all these people? There weren't this many when I fell asleep."
Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.”
“Do you not tire of eternity? Do you not wish to end your suffering?"
"By leaping into the Void? Not really.”
“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.”
“Magnus didn't really want this kind of thing this early in the morning - this talk of aching memories and wanting to forget. This conversation needed to end, now.”
“The rich bought wonderful clothes you recognized. The richest had their pople go to Paris and buy the entire new collection that no one outside of the fashion house has seen.”
“[Magnus] stumbled over a few people to the phone, only to find that he had actually reached for a large decorative cigarette dispenser. It was possible he was not quite at his best either.”
“Oh, no. A story. This was perhaps too maudlin and too much for the early hour, but handsome and heart-broken young men could occasionally be indulged.”
“Behind them, there was a massive bang, and they all turned as a young man welled and dropped something to the ground, which smoked and hissed.
"My Sensor exploded", he growled.
"I think we can assume some very serious demonic activity," Edgar said.”
“Men – witness all the histories! – were subject to sudden lusts and violences, affairs that seemed strangely divorced from heart or head, and often more strangely still from what were surely their true characters. For them chastity was not a prime virtue: she remembered her amazement when she had discovered that so correct a gentleman and kind a husband as Sir John Denny had not always been faithful to his lady. Had Lady Denny cared? A little, perhaps, but she had not allowed it to blight her marriage. ‘Men, my love, are different from us,’ she had said once, ‘even the best of them! I tell you this because I hold it to be very wrong to rear girls in the belief that the face men show to the females they respect is their only one. I daresay, if we were to see them watching some horrid, vulgar prize-fight, or in company with women of a certain class, we shouldn’t recognise our own husbands and brothers. I am very sure we should think them disgusting!”
“You'll be sorry for treating me this way," whined the Wheeler. "I'm a terribly fierce person.”
“It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.”
“I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family.”
“Was this part of the process of growing up, that we finally noticed the people closest to us in a different, clearer light?”
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