“Sometimes it was daunting, knowing how easily I could break things. This one simple curse seemed to dominate my entire life.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I'm cursed. A slow, hungry curse that has worked its way across my entire life, stripping me of everything I love.”

“One of the things he'd always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic.”

“It's amazing how something that had, in concept, seemed so insignificant to my life could not become my entire world.”

“While I liked hamsters, too, the Habitrail cage was expensive. Even I could see that the interconnecting boxes, tubes, and spheres could easily bankrupt a family and lead to addiction later in life. Because, how would you know when to stop? How could you stop? An entire city could be built with a Habitrail.”

“It daunted me that you were so beautiful, that you were so at ease in social situations, as if every room was heliotropic, with you at the center. And I guess it daunted you that I had so many more friends than you, that I could put my words together like this, on paper, and could sometimes conjure a certain sense out of things. The key is to never recognize these imbalances. To not let the dauntingness daunt us.”