“Sounded like girls. Mixed feelings on that score. He didn't despise them with the same passion he used to. In fact, Benny suspected that there would come a time in the not-too-distant future when he might develop a mysterious interest in them.”

“He was bellowing a great many words that were new to Mosca and sounded quite interesting. She memorized them for future use.”

“It was probably true that he objectified women. He thought about them all the time, didn't he? He looked at them a lot. And didn't all this thinking and looking involve their breasts and lips and legs? Female human beings were objects of the most intense interest and scrutiny on Mitchell's part. And yet he didn't think that a word like objectification covered the way these alluring - but intelligent! - creatures made him feel. What Mitchell felt when he saw a beautiful girl was more like something from a Greek myth, like being transformed, by the sight of beauty, into a tree, rooted on the spot, forever, out of pure desire. You couldn't feel about an object the way Mitchell felt about girls.”

“When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being part of them, without changing them. He envies the people who live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious of the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions. But he cannot act. He is an inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He has lost his personhood. He is an exile of time.”

“And anyway, I suspect he secretly liked it when a woman was cold and distant”

“And as for the Lightwoods," Simon said, "it's not that I like them that much. I mean, I like Isabelle, and I sort of like Alec and Jace, too. But there's this girl. And Jace is her brother."When Samuel replied, he sounded, for the first time genuinely amused. "Isn't there always a girl.”