Alastair Carstairs Quotes

Charles had climbed on a bench and was calling out that he had something to say, creating a racket that quickly got the attention of the room. Everyone looked immensely surprised, including Tessa and Will. Sona frowned, clearly thinking Charles was very rude. She didn't know the half of it, Cordelia thought darkly.
"Let me be the first to raise a glass to the happy couple!" said Charles, doing just that. "To James Herondale and Cordelia Carstairs. I wish to add personally that James, my brother's parabatai, has always been like a younger brother to me."
"A younger brother he accused of vandalizing greenhouses across our fair nation," muttered Will.
"As for Cordelia Carstairs - how to describe her?" Charles went on.
"Especially when one has not bothered to get to know her at all," murmured James.
"She is both beautiful and fair," said Charles, leaving Cordelia to wonder what the difference was, "as well as being brave. I am sure she will make James as happy as my lovely Grace makes me." He smiled at Grace, who stood quietly near him, her face a mask. "That's right. I am formally announcing my intention to wed Grace Blackthorn. You will all be invited, of course."
Cordelia glanced over at Alastair; he was expressionless, but his hands, jammed into his pockets, were fists. James had narrowed his eyes.
Charles went on merrily. "And lastly, my thanks go out to the folk of the Enclave, who supported my actions as acting Consul through our recent t ~ Cassandra Clare

How nice for you to be related to such an important sort of demon," said Alastair dryly.
"If it actually cared that James was related to an 'important' demon, it should have said something to me, too," said Lucie. "I am his sister. I do not appreciate being overlooked. ~ Cassandra Clare

You look ill," Matthew observed. "Is it my dancing? Is it me personally?"
"Perhaps I'm nervous," she said. "Lucie did say you didn't like many people."
Matthew gave a sharp, startled laugh, before schooling his face back into a look of lazy amusement. "Did she? Lucie's a chatterbox."
"But not a liar," she said.
"Well, fear not. I do not dislike you. I hardly know you," said Matthew. "I do know your brother. He made my life miserable at school, and Christopher's, and James's."
"Alastair and I are very different," Cordelia said. She didn't want to say more than that. It felt disloyal to Alastair. "I like Oscar Wilde, for instance, and he does not."
The corner of Matthew's mouth curled up. "I see you go directly for the soft underbelly, Cordelia Carstairs. Have you really read Oscar's work?"
"Just Dorian Gray," Cordelia confessed. "It gave me nightmares."
"I should like to have a portrait in the attic," Matthew mused, "that would show all my sins, while I stayed young and beautiful. And not only for sinning purposes - imagine being able to try out new fashions on it. I could paint the portrait's hair blue and see how it looks."
"You don't need a portrait. You are young and beautiful," Cordelia pointed out.
"Men are not beautiful. Men are handsome," objected Matthew.
"Thomas is handsome. You are beautiful," said Cordelia, feeling the imp of the perverse stealing over her. Matthew was looking stubborn. "James is beautiful too, ~ Cassandra Clare

Sona looked slightly horrified. "Cordelia has a tendency to throw herself into every situation headlong," she said to Tessa and Will. "I'm sure you understand."
"Oh, we do," said Will. "We're always speaking very sternly to our children about that very thing. 'If you don't throw yourself into situations headlong, James and Lucie, you can expect bread and water for supper again.'  "
Alastair choked on a laugh. Sona stared at Will as if he were a lizard with feathers. ~ Cassandra Clare

Will glanced over at Cordelia and smiled. "We could ask for no lovelier girl to be his wife."
Alastair looked as if he wished to edge away. Cordelia didn't blame him. "Thank you, Mr. Herondale," she said. "I hope to live up to your expectations."
Tessa looked surprised. "Why would you ever worry about that?"
"Cordelia worries," Alastair said unexpectedly, "because of the idiots who mutter about our father, and our family. She should not let them bother her."
Tessa laid a gentle hand on Cordelia's shoulder. "The cruel will always spread rumors," she said. "And others who take pleasure in that cruelty will believe them and spread them. But I believe that in the end, truth wins out. Besides," she added with a smile, "the most interesting women are always the most whispered about. ~ Cassandra Clare

We're all of us alone," he said. "In the end. ~ Cassandra Clare

I hear you have come to London to be parabatai with our Lucie," said Cecily. She looked nearly as young as Tessa, though since she wasn't an immortal warlock, one wondered how she managed it. "I am pleased - it is high time more girls became parabatai. It has been a state monopolized by men for far too long."
"Well, the first parabatai were male," Will pointed out, in a manner that made Cordelia wonder if Cecily had once found him insufferable, as she found Alastair. ~ Cassandra Clare

My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals. ~ Alastair Campbell

Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us. And there is a beauty that brevity alone provides." He dropped his gaze, then raised it to hers. "I would give you everything of myself," he said. "I would give you more in two weeks than most men would give you in a lifetime. ~ Cassandra Clare

A great sadness welled up in Magnus at the sight of him. It was human to age and die, and Jem stood outside that humanity now, outside the light that burned so brightly and so briefly. It was cold outside that light and fire. No one had greater cause to know that cold than Magnus did. ~ Cassandra Clare

I want it to stop," he said. "Sophie says everyone is still searching for a cure for me. I know I gave Will my permission, but I want everyone to cease looking now, Charlotte. It is over. ~ Cassandra Clare

C-68 has little to do with gun control or crime control, but it is the first step necessary to begin the social re-engineering of Canada. ~ Sharon Carstairs

Furious activity is no substitute for analytical thought. ~ Alastair Pilkington

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Will told me you came from very far away. Where did you live before?'
'Shanghai,' Jem said. 'You know where that is?'
'Chine,' said Tessa with some indignation. 'Doesn't everyone know that?'
Jem grinned. 'You'd be surprised. ~ Cassandra Clare

I played it for my bride, and one day you will play for yours. ~ Cassandra Clare

She longed to touch it, to stroke her fingers through that atmosphere, cleaving white billowing clouds and glittering salty seas, until she felt the hard scabbed crust beneath them. ~ Alastair Reynolds

I thought I would walk with you a little way, my parabatai. ~ Cassandra Clare

He can touch your soul. And there is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter. ~ Cassandra Clare

It has been raining here for ten years.I keep an accurate record of time and can state this with no fear of contradiction. ~ Alastair Bruce

When Will truly wants something," said Jem, quietly, "when he feels something - he can break your heart. ~ Cassandra Clare

It's called optimism - but I'm losing the hang of it fast. ~ Alastair Reynolds

I did not think you would be angry, Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. We were engaged, Tessa. A proposal-an offer of marriage-is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live wit you for years, but that wasn't possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up-all of it up-to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder-a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have. ~ Cassandra Clare

Volyova felt as if her brain consisted of a room full of precocious schoolchildren: individually bright, and - if only they would pool themselves - capable of shattering insights. But some of those schoolchildren were not paying attention; they were staring dreamily out of the window, ignoring her protestations to focus on the present, because they found their own obsessions more intellectually attractive than the dull curriculum she was intent on dispensing. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Then centrifugal gravity took over, and with something close to majesty the skeletal spacecraft descended out of the repair bay as smoothly and elegantly as a falling chandelier. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Tony Blair has always said he will be judged by history. Now Alastair Campbell is history we await his judgment. ~ Rory Bremner

Value your parabatai," he said. "For it is a precious bond. All love is precious. It is why we do what we do. Why do we fight demons? Why are they not fit custodians of this world? What makes us better? It is because they do not build, but destroy. They do not love, but hate only. We are human and fallible, we Shadowhunters. But if we did not have the capability to love, we could not guard humans; we must love to guard them. My parabatai, he loved like few ever could love, with all and everything. I see you are like that too; it burns more brightly in you than the fire of Heaven ~ Cassandra Clare

Clavain was looking at a hyperpig: a genetic chimera of pig and human. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Having created these cognitively enhanced creatures, the safest option at the time appeared to be to launch them into interstellar space. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Masai and elephants. The rest is dust. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Unless you are thinking of committing a crime?" I already have. I'm criminally in love with my parabatai. ~ Cassandra Clare

She opened her eyes- closing them was cowardice, and the Carstairs were not cowards. ~ Cassandra Clare

The games enthralled the public and diverted their attentions from the Halo wars. And - unlike the arts - they could not be used as vehicles for subversion. For gamers like myself it was a near-utopian state of affairs. We were pampered and courted by the houses and made immensely rich. ~ Alastair Reynolds

...she'd held the sword to her as if it were a child, heedless of the deep cut the blade left on her arm. ~ Cassandra Clare

Greg Dyke is on record as saying that once the BBC was attacked, it was their job to defend themselves. But that is not their job. ~ Alastair Campbell

Jem knotted his fingers in the material of Will's sleeve. "You are my parabatai," he said, "You said once I could ask anything of you. ~ Cassandra Clare

He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it."
Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last. ~ Cassandra Clare

But from now on the Herondales owe the Carstairs. Okay? Remember that. ~ Cassandra Clare

I live each day as it comes." "It's the only way. Pedro ~ Alastair Reynolds

When two or more of their lighthuggers met, they would compare and update their respective nomenclature tables. If the first ship had assigned names to a group of worlds and their associated geographical features, and the second ship had no current entries for those bodies, it was usual for the second ship to amend its database with the new names. They might be flagged as provisional, unless a third ship confirmed that they were still unallocated. ~ Alastair Reynolds