“It's a poem, for crying out loud! The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to different people at different times. But you know they're expecting one specific, so-called correct answer, and any other thoughtful response will be counted off. It's wrong to dissect poetry like this!”

“The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to different people at different times.”

“The hardest thing is being with other people - it's like they're on a different wavelenght, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate.”

“Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy — just different. There's nothing wrong with being different.”

“Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.”

“The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness — a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.”