“I don't like eloquence. If it isn't effective enough to pierce your hide, it's tiresome, and if it is effective enough, it muddles your thoughts.”

“If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.”

“Like letting spiders live because they eat mosquitoes,
Clary thought. "So they're good enough to let live, good enough to make your food for you, good enough to flirt with-but not really good enough? I mean, not as good as people.”

“I like how you don't hide your problems like everyone else, and I don't have to hide mine when I'm around you.”

“Everything else you see and experience in this world is effect, and that includes your feelings. The cause is always your thoughts.”

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

“The lifetime we've left behind with strangers
Promises and lies both have their dangers.
I just can't be wrong enough and I can't hide for long enough
So far away, but I still feel your pain.”

“You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles when a carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself.”

“It is pretty well established that there is an overconfidence effect. … You don't have the competence to assess your own competence. … you need competence in order to assess your own competence. … Everyone has the Dunning-Kruger effect.”

“In today's competitive business world, it is not enough to do your job well; no, to be truly effective, you have to develop skills and strategies for things you'll never have to do, and situations that will never come up.”