“The cast of Hamlet had not moved much. They had that haunted yet hopeful look in their eyes, like the ones you see in photographs of people crammed into steerage compartments, traveling to some new, unknown land.”

“All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.”

“Luke indicated Simon and Clary with a wave of his hand. 'I brought some people to see you.'Jace's eyes moved to them. They were as blanked as if the had been painted. 'Unfortunately, ' he said, 'I only had the one pencil.”

“Some people thought spring was the time of renewal, but Sadie had always equated that feeling with autumn. It felt like a shedding of mistakes - falling leaves, crisp breezes. As if you could cast off an old skin to work on a new one.”

“Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.”

“Max had once read in one of his father's books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by.”