“And if a moment exists only in one's perception anyway, then perhaps the rush of feeling he has now is THE MOMENT, and not merely its shadow.”

“In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.”

“Look behind you now.Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen?... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights heading toward Memphis.... Perhaps this is the moment that Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, arrives in the same city in search for Allie, only to find that he has no idea where to look.... Perhaps this is the very instant that a monster called the McGill arrives there as well, aching to ease his pain by sharing his misery - not only with his new minions, but with anyone he can.... And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the covergence of the wrong, of the right, and the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep.... For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of doubt, which is which.”

“Clary hesitated - only for a moment, but the moment stretched out as long as any moment ever had. She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything. - an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps those things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would have already been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.It didn't matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in he end, only one real choice.She raised her eyes to the Angel's. "Jace.”

“Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.”

“Perhaps, he thought, if I only think of this second, this moment, the train won't come at all. Think of the water, think of now.”