Bones Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Bones. Here they are! All 100 of them:

β€œ
Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?' Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself." ..."At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland." "Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β€œ
The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Is this the part where you start tearing off strips of your shirt to bind my wounds?" "If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
It means 'Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234'.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Don't touch any of my weapons without my permission." "Well, there goes my plan for selling them all on eBay," Clary muttered. "Selling them on what?" Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
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Dorothy Parker
β€œ
You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...
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Keri Hulme (The Bone People)
β€œ
I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
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Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
β€œ
Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath." "As soon as I’m back on my feet, handsome," said Simon. "I knew we should have left you a rat.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Declarations of love amuse me. Especially when unrequited.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Don't stop there. I suppose there are also, what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?" "Of course there are. Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the voudun priests are." "What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?" "Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Investigation?" Isabelle laughed. "Now we're detectives? Maybe we should all have code names." "Good idea," said Jace. "I shall be Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Don't." Clary raised a warning hand. "I'm not really in the mood right now." "That's got to be the first time a girl's ever said that to me," Jace mused.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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It's the mortal cup Jace, not the mortal toilet bowl.
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Cassandra Clare
β€œ
We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.
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Walter Mosley (Blue Light)
β€œ
I forgot that's what gets you all hot and bothered, Jace, girls killing things." "I like anyone killing things, especially me." he said with a smile.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. (Jace Wayland)
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
to live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go
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Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
β€œ
One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at." "Meaning you?" "What else?
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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I fell in love with you, smartass, because you were one of usβ€”because you weren’t afraid of me, and you decided to end your spectacular victory by throwing that piece of bone at Amarantha like a javelin. I felt Cassian’s spirit beside me in that moment, and could have sworn I heard him say, β€˜If you don’t marry her, you stupid prick, I will.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
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The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
What's this?" he demanded, looking from Clary to his companions, as if they might know what she was doing there. "It's a girl," Jace said,recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's more of a large and tastfully decorated foyer than a threshold. But I do get easily bored
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Can I help you with something?" Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you." Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Even in half demon hunter clothes, Clary thought, he looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets. Jace on the other hand, looked like the kind of boy who'd come over your house and burn it down just for kicks.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures. No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.
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Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
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Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
It wouldn't be my move," Jace agreed. "First the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green." "If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
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You're an idiot." "I've never claimed to be otherwise.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance covers?
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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What do you want?" "Just coffee. Black - like my soul.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone, I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One. I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.
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Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
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Ask me if I sparkle and I’ll kill you where you stand.” (Bones)
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Jeaniene Frost (This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5))
β€œ
Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
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Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said. Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?" "I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you
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Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β€œ
The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone. H e l l i s e m p t y a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e I kiss my way across the words. Kissing away the devils. Kissing away the pain.
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Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
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Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
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When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.
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Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
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Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored. "In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations." "You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken. "Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit." "I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing." "Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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The Darkling slumped back in his chair. β€œFine,” he said with a weary shrug. β€œMake me your villain.
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Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
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I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners." Jace flipped a page. "Very funny, Fray.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hands on his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The other ten percent.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.
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Margaret Atwood (Cat’s Eye)
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The problem with wanting," he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, "is that it makes us weak.
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Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
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If I die, I will wait for you, do you understand? No matter how long. I will watch from beyond to make sure you live every year you have to its fullest, and then we’ll have so much to talk about when I see you again… (Bones)
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Jeaniene Frost
β€œ
I don't want tea," said Clary, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them." "Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
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That's why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don't say anything, they just nod. The nod means, 'I' am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,' but they don't say anything because they're Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Na razrusha'ya.ο»Ώ I am not ruined. ο»ΏE'ya razrushostο»Ώ. I am ruination.
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Leigh Bardugo (Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #3))
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Don't tell me," Jace said, "Simon's turned himself into an ocelot and you want me to do something about it before Isabelle makes him into a stole. Well, you'll have have to wait till tomorrow. I'm out of commission." He pointed at himself - he was wearing blue pajamas with a hole in the sleeve. "Look. Jammies." "Jace," Clary said, "this is important." "Don't tell me," he said. "You've got a drawing emergency. You need a nude model. Well, I'm not in the mood. You could always ask Hodge," he said as an afterthought. "I hear he'll do anything for a -" "JACE!" she interrupted him, her voice rising to a scream. "JUST SHUT UP FOR A SECOND AND LISTEN, WILL YOU?
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
All knowledge hurts.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
And next time you're planning to injure yourself to get me attention, just remember that a little sweet talk works wonders.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
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Robert A. Heinlein
β€œ
Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.
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Stephen King (Bag of Bones)
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Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests." Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?" "Even then.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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aren't you, uh... reproducing? "sure, we love reproducing it's one of our favorite things.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Just kissing? How quickly you dismiss our love.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
What are all these?" Clary asked. "Vials of holy water, blessed knives, steel and silver blades," Jace said, piling the weapons on the floor beside him, "electrum wire - not much use at the moment but it's always good to have spares - silver bullets, charms of protetion, crucifixes, stars of David-" "Jesus," said Clary "I doubt he'd fit." "Jace." Clary was appalled.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
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Mark Twain
β€œ
The less you say, the more weight your words will carry.
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Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
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Sorry, are you telling me that your demon-slaying buddies need to be driven to their next assignment with the forces of darkness by my mom?
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Going round and around inside a dryer can be fatal, whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.
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Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
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Are you the one with the blue eyes?" "Actually, my eyes are usually described as golden...and luminous.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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You're not gay, are you?" Simon's greenish color deepened. "If I were, I would dress better.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.
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Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
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It's not like there's a law against flying." "Yes there is. The law of gravity.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β€œ
Magnus, standing by the door, snapped his fingers impatiently. "Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self." "Canoodle?" repeated Clary, never having heard the word before. "Magnificent?" repeated Jace, who was just being nasty. Magnus growled. The growl sounded like "Get out.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
Clary felt suddenly annoyed. "When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?" "Exsanguinated," said Jace, impressed. "That's a big word." "And you're a big-" "Tsk tsk," he interupted. "No swearing in church.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β€œ
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
”
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Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β€œ
Love is a luxury." "No. Love is an element." An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β€œ
i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new.
”
”
E.E. Cummings
β€œ
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β€œ
Watch yourself, Nikolai,” Mal said softly. β€œPrinces bleed just like other men.” Nikolai plucked an invisible piece of dust from his sleeve. β€œYes,” he said. β€œThey just do it in better clothes.
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Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
β€œ
By the Angel," Jace said, looking the demon up and down. "I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell." Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth. "I'm not sure about this wind and howling darkness business," Jace went on, "smells more like landfill to me. You sure you're not from Staten Island?
”
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
I missed you every hour. And you know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. I'd catch myself just walking around to find you, not for any reason, just out of habit, because I'd seen something that I wanted to tell you about or because I wanted to hear your voice. And then I'd realize that you weren't there anymore, and every time, every single time, it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I've risked my life for you. I've walked half the length of Ravka for you, and I'd do it again and again and again just to be with you, just to starve with you and freeze with you and hear you complain about hard cheese every day. So don't tell me why we don't belong together," he said fiercely.
”
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Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
β€œ
It's a coffee cup." She could hear the irritation in her own voice. "I know it's a coffee cup." "I can't wait till you draw something really complicated, like the Brooklyn Bridge or a lobster. You'll probably send me a singing telegram.
”
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
It's not funny, Jace," Alec interrupted, starting to his feet. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?" "Yes," Jace said kindly. "It'll do you good-- try to think of it as endurance training.
”
”
Cassandra Clare
β€œ
Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.
”
”
David Foster Wallace
β€œ
Tess, Tess, Tessa. Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isn’t it – a heart ringing – but when you touch me that is what it is like: as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins and splinters my bones with joy. Why have I written these words in this book? Because of you. You taught me to love this book where I had scorned it. When I read it for the second time, with an open mind and heart, I felt the most complete despair and envy of Sydney Carton. Yes, Sydney, for even if he had no hope that the woman he loved would love him, at least he could tell her of his love. At least he could do something to prove his passion, even if that thing was to die. I would have chosen death for a chance to tell you the truth, Tessa, if I could have been assured that death would be my own. And that is why I envied Sydney, for he was free. And now at last I am free, and I can finally tell you, without fear of danger to you, all that I feel in my heart. You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth. With hope at least, Will Herondale
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β€œ
If you knew how to cook, maybe I would eat," Jace muttered. Isabelle froze, her spoon poised dangerously. "What did you say?" Jace edged toward the fridge. "I said I'm going to look for a snack to eat." That's what I thought you said." Isabelle turned her attention to the soup.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
”
”
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
β€œ
Jace?" "Yeah?" "How did you know I had Shadowhunter blood? Was there some way you could tell?" The elevator arrived with a final groan. Jace unlatched the gate and slid it open. The inside reminded Clary of a birdcage, all black metal and decorative bits of gilt. "I guessed," he said, latching the door behind them. "It seemed like the most likely explanation." "You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." He pressed a button in the wall, and the elevator lurched into action with a vibrating groan that she felt all through the bones in her feet. "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put a hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" The other ten percent," she said, and they rode the rest of the way down to the street in silence.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my own badness in the face and accept its existence while you are busy covering your mirror with a white linen sheet. The difference between my sins and your sins is that when I sin I know I'm sinning while you have actually fallen prey to your own fabricated illusions. I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean's waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea. You are a white witch, a wizard; your spells are manipulations and your cauldron from hell yet you wrap yourself in white and wear a silver wig.
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C. JoyBell C.
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It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, β€œYes!” It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
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Oriah Mountain Dreamer
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He made a sound like a choked laughed before he reached out and pulled her into her arms. She was aware of Luke watching them from the window, but she shut her eyes resolutely and buried her face against Jace's shoulder. He smelled of salt and blood, and only when his mouth came close to her ear did she understand what he was saying, and it was the simplest litany of all: her name, just her name.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.
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Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
β€œ
Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?" At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting. Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death. Of course I told him about you," Liesel said.
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Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β€œ
I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles--drug or tattoo--and...no inessential penises either.' 'Inessential penises?' Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. 'Is there any such thing as an essential one?' 'When an essential one comes along, you'll know,' he'd replied.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β€œ
Is this Clarissa Fray?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar, though not immediately identifiable. Clary twirled the phone cord nervously around her finger. "Yeees?" "Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I"m afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to-" "SIMON!" Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!" "Sure it is. You just don't see the humor." "Jerk." Clary sighed, leaning up against the wall.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β€œ
We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
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Terence McKenna
β€œ
Loneliness is a strange sort of thing. It creeps on you, quiet and still, sits by your side in the dark, strokes by your hair as you sleep. It wraps itself around your bones, squeezing so tight you almost can't breathe. It leaves lies in your heart, lies next to you at night, leaches the light out of every corner. It's a constant companion, clasping your hand only to yank you down when you're struggling to stand up. You wake up in the morning and wonder who you are. You fail to fall asleep at night and tremble in your skin. You doubt you doubt you doubt. do I don't I should I why won't I And even when you're ready to let go. When you're ready to break free. When you're ready to be brand-new. Loneliness is an old friend stand beside you in the mirror, looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. You can't find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you're not enough never enough never ever enough. Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion. Sometimes it just won't let go.
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Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))