“Grace has way weirder people than me coming in and out all the time," Dan said. "You, on the other hand, are as boring as it gets. If Grace is worried about anyone cramping her style, I'd point to the gloomy nerd reading about Chucklesky.""Tchaikovsky. He composed the score for the ballet The Nutcracker."Dan thre his hands up. "How am I supposed to get any better at making you sound like a loser if you just do all the work for me?”

“He took one look at me and said, ‘Damn, you cleaned up better than I thought you would.’ (Grace)I worry about the men of your time, Grace. They all seem to be great fools. (Julian)”

“He took a deep breath. “We came here to train, and we should train. If we just spend all the time we’re supposed to be training making out instead, they’ll quit letting me help train you at all.”“Aren’t they supposed to be hiring someone else to train me full-time anyway?”“Yes,” he said, getting up and pulling her to her feet along with him, “and I’m worried that if you get into the habit of making out with your instructors, you’ll wind up making out with him, too.”“Don’t be sexist. They could find me a female instructor.”“In that case you have my permission to make out with her, as long as I can watch.”“Nice.” Clary grinned, bending down to fold up the blanket they’d brought to sit on. “You’re just worried they’ll hire a male instructor and he’ll be hotter than you.”Jace’s eyebrows went up. “Hotter than me?”“It could happen,” Clary said. “You know, theoretically.”“Theoretically the planet could suddenly crack in half, leaving me on one side and you on the other side, forever and tragically parted, but I’m not worried about that, either. Some things,” Jace said, with his customary crooked smile, “are just too unlikely to dwell upon.”

“Is there a particular way you'd like to end up on the floor this time?" he asked as he shifted his stance and waited for me to attack. "Or do you just want me to surprise you?""Gee, if I get a choice, how about if I end up on top this time?”

“We can end this before anyone gets hurt." William held his hands out to sides as if to show her he was unarmed. "You don't want to hurt people, do you? You will if you don't come away with me. You know that.""I'm not bad," Daisha whispered."I believe you." He held out a hand to her. He curled his fingers toward him in a beckoning gesture. "You can do the right thing here. Just come with me. We'll go meet some people who can help us.""Her. The new Graveminder.""No, not her. You and I can fix this all on our own.”

“Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos. Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me. Brand new.News.”