Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

"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."

"It was odd, (Tessa thought), what brought out tenderness in people."

"Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck."

"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."

"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."