“He leaned against the door frame, ignoring the kick of adrenaline the sight of her produced. He wondered why, not for the first time. Isabelle used her beauty like she used her whip, but Clary didn't know she was beautiful at all. Maybe that was why.”

“Why should he remember her? Why should she remember him? She had other things to think about. She was a grown woman. She had to face life. Even if all life had to show her was a locked door, and behind the locked door, no room.”

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”

“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.”

“Simon bristled. She wasn’t his Isabelle, not anymore. He wondered if she ever truly had been. Isabelle didn’t seem like the type of girl to belong to someone. It was one of the things he liked best about her.”

““Mama’s beautiful?” I asked. “Are you blind?” said my brother. “Don’t you see how men and women are always looking at our mother everywhere she goes. Our mother is more beautiful than any movie star you’ll ever see, and yet this isn’t why papa chose her. He chose her, he’s told us a thousand times, because when he first saw her, she was in line to go into the dance hall over in Carlos Malo with her brother and sister. And when a fight broke out, she didn’t get excited and enjoy it like her sister and the other women. No, she and her brother moved away, wanting no part of it, and so, by seeing this, papa knew that she was a woman of high intelligence, respect, and responsibility; a person that he could trust with his life. And trust, remember, is the foundation of all love, papa says.””

“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.”

“Told her she was beautiful. Didn't give up when she didn't believe me.”

“He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced.”

“Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete.”