Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

by Cassandra Clare

Once you had lost everything, she reasoned, there was no reason not to embrace whatever small happinesses you could.

“Mine is a complicated story, and people do not want to hear complicated stories. They want simple stories, in which people are either good or evil, and no one good ever makes a mistake, and no one evil ever repents.”

he sighed and resorted to the last bulwark of an Englishman under stress. “Tea?” he suggested.

He understood now why poets damned their hearts, their capacity for desolation and want.

You love as your father loves: wholly, without conditions or hesitancy. To use that as a weapon is blasphemy.

“We are not here just to forget,” Matthew said, “but also to remember that there are good and beautiful things in this world, always. And mistakes do not take them from us; nothing takes them from us. They are eternal.”

saw a black shadow: a big raven squatted motionless, staring at Majnun, eyes glowing like lamps. “Dressed in mourning, he is a wanderer like myself,” thought Majnun, “and in our hearts we probably feel the same.” —Nizami Ganjavi, Layla and Majnun

She was quite calm when we got your note; calmer than I’d expected, I must say. She said that if your dreams had taken you to Paris, then she was happy. I don’t recall anyone ever saying that about me when I went to Paris,” he added. “It is a dreadful chore, being the eldest.”

“It’s just hard to know, when you have a secret… will telling it bring healing? Or just more hurt? Isn’t it selfish, to unburden myself just to relieve my own conscience?”

“How much love people have denied themselves through the ages because they believed they did not deserve it. As if the waste of love is not the greater tragedy.”

Her heart felt like a rag, wrung out but still saturated with stubborn, ineradicable love.

There had been a time, two years ago, when a darkness had taken up residence at the backs of Matthew’s eyes. A shadow where there had always been sunshine. He had never been willing to speak of it, and after some time it had gone away, replaced by a slightly wilder and more brittle cheerfulness.

He was attractive, but that was not all of it; there was an intensity to him, a focus, as if everything he saw, he carefully considered. It made one wish to be considered by him.

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage: Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty. —Richard Lovelace, “To Althea, from Prison”

She seemed so calm, armored in her elegance, almost untouchable.

You ought to be adored above all things, for you are wonderful. You ought to have someone’s whole heart. But I do not have a whole heart to give you.”

The further you push this, Father, the more you, too, will come under scrutiny. Only be sure you can bear such scrutiny of your every action. Most men could not.”

“I’ve made many bad decisions. None of them have ever had consequences like this.” “Because,” said James, “you ensure that the worst results of your decisions always fall upon yourself.”

“It is easy to confuse monstrousness and power,” said Cordelia. “Especially when one is a woman, as one is not supposed to possess either quality.

“I love you. Let me love you,”

he and James moved to stand shoulder to shoulder. It was a gesture, James knew. Belial could separate them both with a snap of his fingers. Fling them to opposite sides of the courtyard. But gestures mattered. They were important.

it was their hour to be warriors, and the hour for their parents to be strong for them.

Anna’s waistcoat had rose stripes to match Ari’s dress, Cordelia noticed—Anna had taken to matching bits of her outfits to what Ari was wearing, which for Anna was a commitment more serious than marriage runes.

“I am in love with Alastair Carstairs,” Thomas had said loudly and slowly, so there could be no mistake, “and I am going to spend the rest of my life with him.” There had been a momentary silence. “I didn’t think you even liked Alastair,” Gideon had said, looking puzzled. “Not much, at least.” Eugenia had tossed her book to the floor. Rising to her feet, she regarded her parents—the whole room, in fact, even the cat asleep by the window—with a magnificent righteousness. “If anyone here condemns Thomas for who he is or who he loves,” she had announced, “he and I will leave this house immediately. I will reside with him and renounce the rest of you as my family.” Thomas was wondering in alarm how he would explain this business of Eugenia residing with him to Alastair, when Sophie put down her reading glasses with a click. “Eugenia,” she had said, “do not be ridiculous. No one here is going to condemn Thomas.”

He had always known his parents loved him, but knowing that they loved the whole truth of him felt like putting down something very heavy that he’d been carrying for a long time, without realizing the weight of it.

I will always carry it with me, and the knowledge that it is the gifts we did not have the strength to ask for that matter the most.”