A lot of people feel like urban fantasy is a shortcut that gets you around world-building, because it's set "in the real world." But it doesn't really work that way, as I found out. You have to come up with just as consistent an internal cosmology and magic system as you would if you were writing high fantasy.

Cassandra Clare

As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

Cassandra Clare

loss memories long

Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.

Cassandra Clare

pages life-is book

Every heart has its own melody.

Cassandra Clare

james-carstairs melody heart

The more you try to crush your true nature, the more it will control you. Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.

Cassandra Clare

crush love-you trying

I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.

Cassandra Clare

happy-anniversary love world

Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us.

Cassandra Clare

princess eye heart

Everything that happens to you matters to me.

Cassandra Clare

jace matter happens

People who know and love the same books as you, have the road map to your soul.

Cassandra Clare

soul book people

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

Cassandra Clare

healing inspirational book

Too much of anything could destroy you, Simon thought. Too much darkness could kill, but too much light could blind.

Cassandra Clare

too-much light darkness

I am, in the end, what you made me.

Cassandra Clare

ends made

You can't forget the things you did in the past, or you'll never learn from them.

Cassandra Clare

city-of-fallen-angels forget past

Sometimes," Jem said, "our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered-- that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can't imagine, or even really remember, how things were before.

Cassandra Clare

pain change life

Hearts are breakable," Isabelle said. "And I think even when you heal, you're never what you were before".

Cassandra Clare

heartbreak healing thinking

The more beautiful the skin is, the more deadly it is. That's what Will's like. All that pretty face and whatnot just hides how twisted up and rotten he is on the inside.

Cassandra Clare

rotten skins beautiful

You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention.

Cassandra Clare

attention laughing thinking

Inanimate objects are harmless indeed, Mr. Mortmain. But one cannot always say the same of the men who use them.

Cassandra Clare

inanimate-objects use men

He was the one she was doing all this for, but sometimes she missed him so much it felt like she swallowed broken glass.

Cassandra Clare

glasses broken sometimes

When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does.

Cassandra Clare

wish character men

It is as great a thing to love as it is to be loved. Love is not something that can be wasted.

Cassandra Clare

infernal-devices love-is