“To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that?
That's how most men live, and don't even know it.”

“I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.”

“We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale.

I don't know how to respond. This idea is so preposterous.”

“Machiavelli is not concerned with how men do live merely in order to describe it; his intention is rather, on the basis of knowledge of how men do live, to teach princes how they ought to rule and even how they ought to live.”

“Don't know how it all got started, I don't know what they do with their lives…”

“The dead live."
"How do they live?"
"By love.”

“You don't know how to live until you learn how to die.”

“I don't know how to live in the world as a Shadowhunter without Will. I don't think i even want to. I am still a parabatai, but my other half is gone.”

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”

“But how do we even get to the land of the dead?” I asked. “I mean…without dying.”