The Ragpicker King (The Chronicles of Castellane, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

All That Is Good Comes from the Gods. All That Is Evil Comes from Men.

She had remembered him as beautiful, but not as beautiful as this. As forbidding, but not as forbidding as this.

It must be freedom, he thought, to care little what others thought of you.

It was not his earlier, practiced smile. It was a real smile, with no edge of falsity to it.

“I have never trusted myself,” he said. “But I think, if you did—I could.”

She could understand it now, how you could have something and still not have enough of it, ever.

He looked almost fanatical, as if he were praying for salvation—or damnation, perhaps.

Hope is a danger, you know. Hope may raise you up for a time, but when it is disappointed, the fall is all the more acute.

There was nothing more intoxicating than being seen.