“but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.”

“He wants her in his bedroom. And not in that way — no girl has ever been in his bedroom that way. It is his private space, his sanctuary. But he wants Clary there. He wants her to see him, the reality of him, not the image he shows the world. He wants to lie down on the bed with her and have her curl into him. He wants to hold her as she breathes softly through the night; to see her as no one else sees her: vulnerable and asleep. To see her and to be seen.”

“He had learned early on the trick of living separately in a crowd, private in his mind when his body could not be. But he was born a mountain-dweller, and had learned early, too, the enchantment of solitude, and the healing of quiet places.”

“He lost himself in the words and images conjured in his mind and for a while forgot ... He found himself flying among stars and planets ...”

“Bliss is terribly private.”

“He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.”