Cassandra Clare photo

Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Tehran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old.

Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on a Jane Austen short story of the same name (and which later inspired her current pen name).

After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city. She turned to writing fantasy fiction full time in 2006 and hopes never to have to write about Paris Hilton again.

Cassie’s first professional writing sale was a short story called “The Girl’s Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord” in a Baen anthology of humor fantasy. Cassie hates working at home alone because she always gets distracted by reality TV shows and the antics of her cats, so she usually sets out to write in local coffee shops and restaurants. She likes to work in the company of her friends, who see that she sticks to her deadlines.

City of Bones was her first novel. Sword Catcher is her most recent novel.


“Jace threw his hands up. "So it doesn't work.""Not necessarily," Luke said. "There might simply be nothing going on that might activate it. Perhaps there isn't anything here that Alec is afraid of."Magnus glanced at Alec and raised his eyebrows. "Boo," he said.Jace was grinning. "Come on, surely you've got a phobia or two. What scaresyou?"Alec thought for a moment. "Spiders," he said.Clary turned to Luke. "Have you got a spider anywhere?"Luke looked exasperated. "Why would I have a spider? Do I look like someone who would collect them?""No offense," Jace said, "but you kind of do.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“You know what the worst thing I can imagine is? Simon had said. Not trusting someone I love.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“There is no pretending," Jace said with absolute clarity. "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“And I'm suppose to sit by while you date boys and fall in love with someone else, get married...?" His voice tightened. "And meanwhile, I'll die a little bit more every day, watching.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Love makes you a liar.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I was thinking about the first time I ever saw you," he said, "and how after that I couldn't forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn't stop myself. I forced Hodge to let me be the one who came to find you and bring you back to the Institue. And even back then, in that stupid coffee shop, when I saw you sitting on that couch with Simon, even then that felt wrong to me-- I should have been the one sitting with you. The one who made you laugh like that. I couldn't get rid of that feeling. That it should have been me. And the more I knew you, the more I felt it--it had never been like that for me before. I'd always wanted a girl and then gotten to know her and not wanted her anymore, but with you the feeling just got stronger and stronger until that night when you showed up at Renwick's and I knew.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“He landed on his back amid a tangled pile of clothes. "Isabelle," Simon protested weakly, "do you really think this is going to make you feel any better?""Trust me," Isabelle said, placing a hand on his chest, just over his unbeating heart. "I feel better already.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Not everything is about you," Clary said furiously."Possibly," Jace said, "but you do have to admit that the majority of things are.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“You couldnt erase everything that caused you pain with recollection.Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“You never really hate anyone as much as someone you cared about once.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I am, in the end, what you made me.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“If you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Really? Are you going to ask him to be your partner?" Isabelle asked. "It's like cotillion, this partners business, except with killing.""So, exactly like a cotillion," said Simon.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“If there were such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“And when I saw him[my father] lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might be not. Either way, we're on our own.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“the less you had, the more careful you had to be about everything you did have.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are; struggle against it and you'll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it. and you'll survive”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“It isn't against the Law to be an idiot.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Mom. I have something to tell you. I’m undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But I’m here to tell you that undead are just like you and me … well, okay. Possibly more like me than you.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“The funny thing about mundies is how obsessed with magic they are for a bunch of people who don't even know what the word means.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace."It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath.""As soon as I’m back on my feet, handsome," said Simon."I knew we should have left you a rat.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. (Jace Wayland)”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I don't do what I'm told, but I might do what you want if you ask me nicely.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him.""Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply — I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“And Jessamine-Jessamine was gazing at her in abject horror, like someone who has seen a vision of their own ghost. For a moment Tessa felt a stab of guilt.It lasted only a moment, though. Slowly Jessamine lowered her hand from her mouth, her face still very pale. "Goodness, my nose is enormous," she exclaimed. "Why didn't anyone tell me?”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“You can keep it a secret.... But secrets have their own weight, and it can be a very heavy one.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I think you ought to let me take poor Tessa into town to get some new clothes. Otherwise, the first time she takes a deep breath, that dress will fall right off her."Will looked interested. "I think she should try that out now and see what happens.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“To draw something is to try to capture it FOREVER, if you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“If I feel the urge to burst into flames, I'll let you know," Simon was getting fed up. "Look, did you actually ask me to come all the way uptown just so you could stare at me like I'm something in a petrie dish? Next time I'll send you a photo.""And I'll frame it and put it on my nightstand," Jace said, but he didn't sound as if his heart was in the sarcasm. "Look, I asked you here for a reason, not to stare at you. Much as I hate to admit it, vampire, we have something in common.""Totally awesome hair?" Simon suggested”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“He has fought many battles with us" (Jace) By which you mean one battle" muttered Simon. "Two if you count the one I was a rat”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Why can't I go to Idris with you, then?Because it's not safe for you thereO and it's safe for me here? I've been nearly killed almost a dozen times in the past month.That's because Valentine has been concentrating on the two Mortal Instruments that were here. He's going to shift his focus to Idris now. We all know it--We're hardly as certain of anything as all that. And the Clave wants to meet Clarissa. You know that, Jace.The Clave can screw itself.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Other people have shrubbery in their gardens. You have a bottomless pit.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Amar es destruir, y ser amado es ser destruido.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I always thought that 'Good things happen to those who do the wave' No wonder I've been so confused”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Well I'm not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I'd rather stay down here and rot.""Forever?" said Simon. "Forever is an awfully long time."Jace raised his eyebrows, "I knew it," he said, "you want to kiss me, don't you?"Simon threw his hands up in exasperation. "Of course not but if-""I guess it's true what they say," observed Jace. "There are no straight men in the trenches.""That's atheists jackass," said Simon furiously. "There are no atheists in the trenches.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“nothing says 'I love you' like reducing yourself to a smoldering pile of ashes”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“She winced and covered her ears as Eric,onstage, wrestled with his microphone."Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. "Come my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!"Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him."Clary giggled. "Who uses the word 'loins'?""Eric," Simon said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them."'Turgid is my torment!" Eric wailed. "Agony swells within!""You bet it does," Clary said.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“What makes you think that Valentine's change of plans had anything to do with your brother?" "Because only Jace can piss someone off that much.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“You have something on your neck. What Looks like a bite mark, what were you doing out all night, anyway? Nothing. I went walking in the park. Tried to clear my head. And ran into a vampire What? No! I fell. On your neck?”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love."— Madame Dorothea”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Every time I annoy him he retreats into his No Mundanes Allowed tree house." Simon pointed at Jace.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?""Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me." He winked at the girls, who giggled and hid behind their hair.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“I hate Brooklyn.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Isabelle looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you seriously jump thirty feet out of a Malachi Configuration? Did he, Alec?""He did," Alec confirmed. "I've never seen anything like it.""I've never seen anything like this." Jace lifted a ten-inch dagger from the floor. One of Isabelle's pink brassiers was spread on the wickedly sharp tip. Isabelle snached it off, scowling.”
Cassandra Clare
Read more
“Clary stopped dead in her tracks. "Simon?""Oh, God," said Jace, sounding resigned. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd got hold of something interesting." -Clary and Jace pg. 114”
Cassandra Clare
Read more