“It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open." Magnus smiled crookedly. "Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn't have a sense of humor.”

“Congratulations, you have a sense of humor. And to those who didn't: Go stick your head in the mud.”

“No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.”

“We can be so afraid
lost inside in search of a mother
And yet we go about
shouting "justice"
and hurting one another”

“I thought you were dead."
Magnus smiled crookedly. "What, from that scratch?" He glanced down at the reddening jacket in Alec's hand. "Okay, a deep scratch. Like, from a really, really big cat.”

“Where is a book before it is born? Does a book grow like a tree? Who are a book's parents? Does a book need two parents -- a mother and a father? Can a book be born inside another book? And where is the parent book of books?”

“Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.”

“Then Alec had smiled at one of Magnus’s jokes, and the smile had lit a lamp in his solemn face, making his blue eyes brilliant, and briefly taking Magnus’s breath away”

“If I didn't have a sense of humor, how could I stand this trial now?”

“No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.”