“Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.”

“We look so very different from the way we sound. It’s a shock, similar to hearing your own voice for the first time, when you’re forced to wonder how the rest of you comes across if you sound nothing like the way you think you sound. You feel dislodged from the old shoe of yourself.”

“The world is so beautiful, when you look at it.So detailed. So sharp. Everything’s just there--so much more than we need. Light we can’t see, sounds we can’t hear. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what it takes to make it real.”

“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”

“We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.”

“I think it’s wonderful that we can kiss and forget, and when we can’t it’ll be time to argue.”