“Right now, at this moment in time, life was just right. He'd discovered this before. If you don't look forward and you don't look back, you can fix yourself in now and enjoy it.”

“We sit together in silence for a while. This is what I have always liked about James. We can make a good silence together. There's something between us that doesn't need words or actions. It settles around us and I can feel it now, hovering gently, ready to wrap me in its nebulous folds, like a delicate lace shawl. I want it to be like this always, something inside us meeting and holding hands, something calm and soothing and healing.”

“Maybe this is a characteristic of happy people. An ability to be entertained by the world.”

“I exist in the eye of the storm, the calm in the centre of a perpetual hurricane of cars and lorries heading for the M6, the north and Scotland, or south to Penzance and Land’s End. I sometimes wonder if they don’t go on the motorway at all, that I hear the same vehicles circling endlessly, a kind of multiple Flying Dutchman, doomed to travel for ever. I don’t regret for one minute that I am no longer one of them.”

“Lovely,wonderful Isabelle.Could you please go away?Now is a really bad time."Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother,and back again."Then,you dont want me to tell you that Camille's just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?""No,"Magnus said."I dont want you to tell me that""Well,to bad"Isabelle said"Because it's true .I mean,I guess you dont have to go,but-”

“You don't believe me?" Jace asked. "Fine. Go ahead. Kiss me right now."Alec stared at him in horror."Exactly. Despite my staggering good lucks, you actually don't like me that way.”

“Stop it," he hissed in her ear. "You'll just make it worse for yourself. It's better if you don't look.""Like you do?" she hissed back. "Shutting your eyes and pretending something's not happening doesn't make it not true, Jace. You ought to know better-”