Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

"Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?"Will demanded with mock horror. "Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not something wrong, as the case may be."He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship."

"Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck."

"Henry turned as if to dart out of the room, then swung around and stared at them, a look of confusion passing over his freckled face, as if he had only now had cause to wonder why Will, Tessa, and Jem might be crouching together in a mostly disused storage room. "What are you three doing in here, anyway?"Will tilted his head to the side and smiled at Henry. "Charades,"he said. "Massive game."

"I believe in good and evil,"said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness."Tessa looked at will. "What about you? What do you believe?"Pulvis et umbra sumus,"said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. "I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?"

"Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?"Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all."

"Whatever you are physically...male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy--all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside."

"So you're a Shadowhunter,' Nate said. 'De Quincey told me that you lot were monsters.''Was that before or after he tried to eat you?' Will inquired."

"Well, she's not responding to my advances,"he observed more brightly than he felt, "so she must be dead.""Or she's a woman of good taste and sense."

"One must always be careful of books,"said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

"Remember when you tried to convince me to feed a poultry pie to the mallards in the park to see if you could breed a race of cannibal ducks?""They ate it too,"Will reminisced. "Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck."

"It's all right to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it."

"You know,"Gabriel said, "there was a time I thought we could be friends, Will.""There was a time I thought I was a ferret,"Will said, "but that turned out to be the opium haze. Did you know it had that effect? Because I didn't."

"There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it."

"If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?"

"Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs."

"Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do."

"Will suspected Jem was in fact cleverer than he was himself - but he lacked Will's tendency to assume the absolute worst about people and proceed from there."

"That was enterprising,"Will sounded nearly impressed.Nate smiled. Tess shot him a furious look. "Don't look pleased with yourself. When Will says 'enterprising' he means 'morally deficient.'""No, I mean enterprising,"said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done'."

"Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?"Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all."

"Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry."