“It made him feel indispensable and needed - even if the fact that Jocelyn didn't appear to care wheather he slept in her daughter's bed or not did underscore that Clary's mother apparently regarded him as about sexually threatening as a goldfish.”

“No way they could threaten him, not even with Amelie; he'd already given Amelie the finger on the way out of Morganville and he clearly wasn’t worried about her coming after him— or, if so, what would happen when she did.”

“She needed him to be him. Even if he could not be hers.”

“Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled—he did not fall—
Impaled him on her fiercest stakes—
He neutralized them all.

She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
But, when her worst was done,
And he, unmoved, regarded her,
Acknowledged him a man.”

“More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would.”

“She did not know what it was about him that had always made her want to see him broken.”

“You're not going to ask me that and if you did I'd pretend that you didn't because everybody and their mother plus their dog and cat and their goldfish asks me that.”

“Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.”

“She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care.”

“There was something about Jace, though, that made her want to push him, crack that shell of cynicism and make him admit her believed something, felt something, cared about anythinng at all.”