“we are not here just because we have nowhere else; we need nowhere else, because we have the Institute, and those who are in it are our family.”
“The thing that you are too young to understand is that we all hide things. We hide them from our lovers because we wish to present our best selves, but also because if it is real love, we expect our loved one to simply understand it, without needing to ask. In a true partnership, the kind that lasts through the ages, there is an unspoken communion.”
“If you’re being punished,” Clary said, “then so am I. Because all those things you felt, Ifelt them too, but we can’t—we have to stop feeling this way, because it’s our onlychance.”Jace’s hands were tight at his sides. “Our only chance for what?”“To be together at all. Because otherwise we can’t ever be around each other, not evenjust in the same room, and I can’t stand that. I’d rather have you in my life even as abrother than not at all”
“Camille sighed dramatically. "The thing that you are too young to understand is that we all hide things. We hide them from our lovers because we wish to present our best selves, but also because if it is real love, we expect our loved one to simply understand it, without needing to ask. In a true partnership, the kind that lasts through the ages, there is an unspoken communion.”
“You are a Lightwood," Cecily said. "You stayed because you were loyal to your family name. It is not cowardice.""Wasn't it? Is loyalty still a commendable quality when it is misdirected?"Cecily opened her mouth, then closed it again. Gabriel was looking for her, his eyes shining in the moonlight. He seemed genuinely desperate to hear her answer. She wondered if he had anyone else to talk to. She could see how it might be terrifying to take one's moral qualms to Gideon; he seemed so staunch, as if he never questioned himself in his life and would not understand those who did."I think," she said, choosing her words with care, "that any good impulse can be twisted into something evil. Look at the Magister. He does what he does because he hates the Shadowhunters, out of loyalty to his parents, who cared for him, and who were killed. It is not beyond the realm of understanding. And yet nothing excuses the result. I think when we make choices-for each choice is individual of the choices we have made before-we must examine not only our reasons for making them but what result they will have, and whether good people will be hurt by our decisions.”
“We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us.”
“We are not our parents, Gabriel. We do not have to carry the burden of their choices or their sins.”