# City of Ashes - Author: [Cassandra Clare](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cassandra-clare.md) - Quotes: 73 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cassandra-clare/city-of-ashes ## Quotes > "I know you don't have to help us out-it's a favor-" > > "Stop. I don't do favors, Alec. I do things for you because-- well, why do you think I do them? > "How to Come Out to Your Parents," she read out loud. "LUKE. Don't be ridiculous. Simon's not gay, he's a vampire." > "Here, I'll practice on you. Mom. I have something to tell you. I'm undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But I'm here to tell you that the undead are just like you and me. Well, okay. Possibly more like me than you." > "It's not often you get to see someone drool. Especially with such total abandon. Mouth wide open and everything." > "Forgive my parental panic. I tend to get a little nervous when you're not in my immediate line of sight these days." > > "Oh yeah? How long do you think that's going on for?" > > "Not long. Five, maybe six years." > > "Luke!" > > "I plan to let you start dating when you're thirty, if that helps." > "This is so weird. I keep expecting the truck to start sinking." > > "I can't believe you just went through what we went through and you think this is weird." > "What about the dark? We could lock you in the basement." > > "I'm a demon hunter. Clearly, I am not afraid of the dark." > "Nothing," chorused Clary, Simon, Alec, Magnus, and Jace, in a surprising and probably never-to-be-repeated unison. > "Oh, for goodness' sake, is he really waking us up at this ungodly hour just to prove his love to you or something?" > "That does it, I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year." > > "Why?" > > "So you can look up 'fun.' I'm not sure you know what it means." > "Admiring yourself? You won't look so pretty when the Clave gets through with you." > > "You do seem obsessed with my looks. Could it be that all this is because you're attracted to me?" > "With Jace, you don't really get to choose your insulting nickname." > "I thought I'd lie on the floor and writhe in pain for awhile. It relaxes me." > "Never doubt my weaseling abilities, Shadowhunter, for they are epic and memorable in their scope." > He waited, but nothing happened. > > "Boom? Was something suppose to happen there?" > "If you're texting Magnus to say 'I think u r kewl,' I'm going to kill you." > "We have to get out of here." > > "No offense, but that's pretty obvious." > She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said I want to hate you, and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them-had let Alec go on lying and pretending-because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. > "Look. In all the years I've known him, there's always been exactly one place Simon wanted to be, and he's always fought like hell to make sure he got there and stayed there." > > "Where's that?" > > "Wherever you were." > "I keep thinking about blood. I dream about it. Wake up thinking about it. Pretty soon I'll be writing morbid emo poetry about it." > "Hearing my achievements recited is certainly gratifying, but I'm not sure what your point is, Alec." > "Every time I annoy him, he retreats into his No Mundanes Allowed tree house." > "I guess it's true what they say. There are no straight men in the trenches." > > "That's atheists, jackass. There are no atheists in the trenches." > "What makes you think that Valentine's change of plans had anything to do with your brother?" > > "Because only Jace can piss someone off that much." > "Well, I'm not kissing the mundane. I'd rather stay down here and rot." > > "Forever? Forever's an awfully long time." > > "I knew it. You want to kiss me, don't you?" > "When did you get that?" > > "The shirt? At Macy's. Winter sale." > What they had between them was still as fragile as a flickering candle flame, as delicate as eggshell - and he knew that if it shattered, if he somehow let it break and be destroyed, something inside him would shatter too, something that could never be fixed. > "Because I foresee many romantic picnics in our future. You, drinking a virgin pina colada. Me, drinking the blood of a virgin." > "If I made a joke about just dropping in, would you write me off as a cliche?" > "What did he promise you?" > > "Oh, you know. The usual. A lifetime's supply of Knicks tickets." > Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time. > "You might want to lie down. I find that helps when the crushing sense of horrible realization sets in." > "It was hard not to laugh. Determination like that in a ten-year-old is something to see. He was like a pit bull." > > "If pit bulls wore glasses and were allergic to ragweed." > "There might simply be nothing going on that might activate it. Perhaps there isn't anything here that Alec is afraid of." > > Magnus glanced at Alec and raised his eyebrows. "Boo." > "The greatest fear in Jonathan's life is the love he feels for his sister." > "They can't be worse than vampires. And you did all right with them." > > "Did all right with them? By which I take it you mean we survived?" > > "Well. . ." > > "Faeries," Jace went on, as if Simon hadn't spoken, "are the offspring of demons and angels, with the beauty of angels and the viciousness of demons. A vampire might attack you, if you enter its domain, but a faerie could make you dance until you died with your legs ground into stumps, trick you into a midnight swim and drag you screaming underwater until your lungs burst, fill your eyes with faerie dust until you gouged them out at the roots-" > > "Jace!" Clary snapped. > "I really was sick. I swear. I almost died back there on the ship, you know." > > "I know. Every time you almost die, I almost die myself." > "Traded him for Alec," Clary said. > > "Not permanently." > > "No," said Jace. "Just for a few hours. Unless I don't come back. In which case, maybe he does get to keep Alec. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy." > > "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out." > > "That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?" Simon inquired. "No, probably not." > "No. I've always known just who you are. Ever since the first time I saw you getting off the ship from Idris, when you were ten years old-you walked into my heart, just as my own children did when they were born." > "You disappear so completely into your head sometimes. I wish I could follow you." > > You do. You live in my head all the time. > "If you're calling me up just to chat, mundane, you must be lonelier than I thought." > "What? I thought you came down right on the side of go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. 'The Law is the Law, Isabelle.' What was all that you were spouting?" > "Any last words?" > > Simon knew what he was supposed to say. Sh'ma Yisrael, adonai elohanu, adonai echod. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He tried to speak the words, but a searing pain burned his throat. "Clary," > "No offense to anyone involved, but the only one among you who seems formidable is Jace. An untrained Shadowhunter and a scared vampire. . ." > "No, I'm just a very naughty boy. I do all sorts of bad things. I kick kittens. I make rude gestures at nuns." > "You don't know my father. He'll laugh in your face and offer you some money to mail my body back to Idris." > > "Don't be absurd-" > > "You're right. Coming to think of it, he'll probably make you pay for the shipping charges yourself." > "I wish I could hate you. I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and I-" > > "And you what?" > > "What do you think? Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything. It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop." > "Faeries have no sense of humor." > > "Oh, I wouldn't say that. There's a pixie nightclub downtown called Hot Wings. Not that I have ever been there." > "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe." > "Is standing by the window muttering about blood something he does all the time?" > > "No, sometimes he sits on the couch and does it." > "A werewolf. Like everyone else here. Except you, and the asshole. And the asshole's sister." > "Nearly unlimited supernatural power, and all you do is use it to watch reruns. What a waste." > "I don't want to be a man. I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can't confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead." > "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt." > Jace hadn't seemed perturbed, but knowing him, Simon had no doubt he could kill several people in a single morning and go out for waffles afterward. > Magnus snapped his fingers again, menacingly. "Get up." > > "Or you'll be the next one to go up in smoke," said Simon with relish. > > "There's no need to clarify my finger snap. The implication was clear in the snap itself." > "Maybe I should ask for blessings on my mission against all those who wear white after Labor Day." > "Does he normally just lie on the floor like that without moving?" > "Yeah, he's terrified I'll tell everyone that he's always really wanted to be a ballerina." > "He's quoting Dungeons and Dragons. Ignore him." > "You see, cuckoos are parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests. When the egg hatches, the baby cuckoo pushes the other baby birds out of the nest. The poor parent birds work themselves to death trying to find enough food to feed the enormous cuckoo child who has murdered their babies and taken their places." > > "Enormous? Did you just call me fat?" > > "It was an analogy." > > "I am not fat." > "We need to talk. All of us. About what we're going to do now." > > "I was going to watch Project Runway. It's on next." > "We seem to be trapped in an episode of One Life to Waste. It's all very dull." > Then again, it was Jace. He'd pick a fight with a Mack truck if the urge took him. > "Looks like a bite mark. What have you been doing all day, anyway?" > > "Nothing. I went walking in the park. Tried to clear my head." > > "And ran into a vampire?" > > "What? No! I fell." > > "On your neck?" > "Sure. And Madonna wants me as a backup dancer on her next world tour." > "I'm not sure anyone can make Jace do anything. But I think you can remind him that he has something to live for." > "It was like a bad movie, except he didn't actually twirl his mustache." > "I love round tables. They suit me so much better than a square." > "However, there is something you should have. Something every Shadowhunter should have." > > "An obnoxious, arrogant attitude?" > "This kind of reminds me of the time my grandfather gave me his old golf clubs." > > "Yeah, except you never use those." > > "And I hope you never have to use that." > "I don't see anything you need protecting from here," said the boy. "Except some bad decor and a possible mold problem. But you can usually clear that up with bleach." > "I'll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from 'almost extinct' to 'not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.' Will that make you happy?"