“He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?”

“Peter sighed. He turned the palms of his hands up as though to guess at rain. Anna knew him, theme and choreography. The sunshiny spring afternoon seeped through his fingers. He looked up at the witnessing heavens to keep what he could. He dropped his arms and let the rest go.”

“The little red lark, like a rosy spark
Of song, to his sun-burst flies;
But till you are risen, earth is a prison,
Full of my captive sighs.”

“With a sigh of relief, Clary glanced back over her shoulder. Magnus was standing at the door to the cottage, his arms folded across his chest. Catching her eye, he grinned and dropped one eyelid in a single, glittering wink.”

“Thus falling, falling from afar,
As if some melancholy star
Had mingled with her light her sighs,
And dropped them from the skies.”

“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes ad his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”

“He showed no fear. It seemed that, at the commencement, his race had known gods and no other. Gods had bound and ill treated and slaughtered and played with them. Gods were a fact, as were the sun and the shaking of the earth. Just another terrible reality.”

“Will Solace sighed. He was, of course, tied to Nico. He propped his elbow on Nico’s shoulder as if the son of Hades were a convenient shelf.”

“Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep or a kiss too long,
And then comes a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.”

“Old hates lie in wait for the infant
till he grows into a man.
Then they leap upon him
when he puts his father's coat on.
When the father's bones drop into the grave,
the lice flock up as the dark earth turns,
to feed on a son's guilt-love.

No man can look in his son's face,
for what was done to him, he does in turn,
and he carries the hate in his blood;
ghosts of times forgotten,
tragedies unseen, unspoken,wait in the past's proud flesh,
and nothing will shake them off.”