“In her excitement at the idea of just walking out the door she had walked out the door without stopping to practice and without even her sheet music, and now she had nothing to play from and nothing prepared.Some people might have been daunted by this setback. The Konigsbergs faced musical catastrophe on a daily basis, & their motto was: Never say die.”

“She had opened a door... and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge... Pain had made a sadist of her.”

“Will only looked at her. There had been light in his eyes on the stairs, as he'd locked the door, when he'd kissed her--a brilliant, joyous light. And it was going now, fading like the last breath of someone dying. She thought of Nate, bleeding to death in her arms. She had been powerless then, to help him. As she was now. She felt as if she were watching the life bleed out of Will Herondale, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.”

“Without her glasses Vivian did look a little frightening. She had tight sinewy strappy muscles and a face that was hardened and almost brutal - a face that might have been chiseled by a sculptor who had fallen out of love with the idea of beauty.”

“Blake had his own idea. He didn’t lead her to the dancefloor. Blake took her deeper into the corner behind their table.With the pink rose cradled carefully in their combined hands, Blake and Livia began a slow dance to music only they could hear. Livia danced to the symphony she heard flowing out of the church window the night she found out he could play. She opened her eyes to see Blake’s serene face. She wondered if he danced to music he was composing in his head at this very moment—music that had not yet been played.”

“And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when suddenly a new part came to her. Wait for it to grow like leaves grow slowly on the branches of a spring oak tree.”