“She'd always had such contempt for mundanes, the way all Shadowhunters did--she'd believed that they were soft, stupid, sheeplike in their complacency. Now she wondered if all that hatred didn't just stem from the fact that she was jealous. It must be nice not worrying that every time one of your family members walked out the door, they'd never come back.”

“She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.”

“And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.”

“For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama - but imagining that Joe had liked the book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. [...] Tess was well aware it was escapiscm but what a way to pass another evening on her own.”

“Were all first loves like that? Somehow she doubted it; even now it struck her as being more real than anything she'd ever known. Sometimes it saddened her to think that she'd never experience that kind of feeling again, but then life had a way of stamping out that intensity of passion; she'd learned all too well that love wasn't always enough.”

“Christ on crackers, she'd barely gotten over finding out about the others: if she had to start believing aliens were real, too, she was finished. she'd stab herself in the heart with a blue pencil just see if she didn't."-Corinne D'Alessandro”