“You know how the bonds of family are, my lady... They cling as tightly as vines. And sometimes, like vines, they cling tightly enough to kill.”

“She felt as if the world were tilting and she was clinging on helplessly, trying to keep from tumbling into a black abyss.”

“He clung to her more tightly, knotting his hands in her hair, trying to tell her, with the press of his mouth on hers, all the things he could never say out loud: I love you; I love you and I don’t care that you’re my sister; don’t be with him, don’t want him, don’t go with him. Be with me. Want me. Stay with me.I don’t know how to be without you.”

“I'm all right,' Jace protested, but his hand gripped Alec's sleeve tightly. 'I can stand.' It looks to me like you're using a wall to prop you up. That's not my definition of "standing."'It's leaning,' Jace told him. 'Leaning comes right before standing.”

“You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.”

“The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.”

“Meliorn looked impassive. "Mundane humans are not permitted in the Court.""I wish someone had mentioned that earlier," said Simon, to no one in particular. "I take it I'm just supposed to wait out here until vines start growing on me?"Meliorn considered. "That might offer significant amusement.”