“Obsessed with tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid for her. Bitterly he recognised that he was always believing his own lies, caught in nets he had elaborately woven.”

“He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting girls, as if he did it everyday.”

“In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept.”

“No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not be this — or that — or the other; always precisely the things he wanted to be. He had not wit or scope or force. Judges always ranked him beneath a rival, if he had any; and he believed the judges were right. His work seemed to him thin, commonplace, feeble. At times he felt his own weakness so fatally that he could not go on; when he had nothing to say, he could not say it, and he found that he had very little to say at best.”

“He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.”

“The king was not marrying a princess; he was not giving in to the convention of arranged marriages between families of royal blood. No, he had fallen in love with a "little Iranian girl" and, as in fairy tails, he was going to follow his heart.”

“He had not applauded, he had remained seated, but he had looked at her steadily. From the depths of eternity he had looked at her and Rosalind became immortal. If I could believe him, she thought, if only I could believe him!”

“The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.”

“He was gazing at her, the way one did when one felt one was unobserved. He had that look on his face, the look he usually got only when he was playing the violin, as if he were completely caught up and entranced.”

“Clary," he whispered. There was a thump, and she realized he had fallen to his kees by the side of her bed. She didn't move, but her body tightened. His voice was a whisper. "Clary, it's me. It's me.”