I'm greedy about cities - I like to form my impressions of them on my own, and on foot as far as possible, looking and listening, having conversations with bridges and streets and riverbanks, conversations I tend not to be aware of until a little lat...
The way 'The Icarus Girl' came about was by me just basically bragging it with a literary agent and telling him I'd written 150 pages when I'd only written 20. And I think it was when the agent e-mailed me back right the very next day after sending h...
But pecuniary interest is clearly not in your nature. How quaint. I have written about people who don't care for money, but I never expected to meet one. Therefor I conclude that the difficulty concerns integrity. People whose lives are not balanced ...
Write every day. Don't kill yourself. I think a lot of people think, 'I have to write a chapter a day' and they can't. They fall behind and stop doing it. But if you just write even one hundred words a day, it's not that much. By the end of a month, ...
You know that I had heard so many times people say things like, 'You could never write 'Harry Potter' and have it be about Harriett Potter because nobody would read it; people only want to read an adventure story if it's about a boy,' and I thought, ...
Zeus: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm not going anywhere. Inspector Cobb: Simon says you got to go. Zeus: I'm not jumping through hoops for some psycho! That's a white man, with white problems. You deal with him. Call me when he crosses 110th Stree...
Simon Graham: I came over with the British trade mission, oh, years ago. I was soon relieved of my position. I had a rather unfortunate tendency to tell the truth in a country where no one ever says what they mean. So now, I very accurately translate...
Howard Simons: Then can we use their names? Carl Bernstein: No. Ben Bradlee: Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story? You guys are about to write a story that says the former Attorney General, the highest-ranking law enfor...
(found in Just My Type by Simon Garfield p. 19) If you don't get your type warm it will be no use at all for setting down warm human ideas ... By jickity, I'd like to make a type that fitted 1935 all right enough, but I'd like to make it warm - so fu...
Say it," she said. "Say it sober." "I love you," he said. "I don't want you to say it back unless you mean it, but I love you." She leaned back over him, and pressed the pads of her fingertips against his. "I mean it.
She had thought once that there were good people and bad people, that there was a side of light and a side of darkness, but she no longer thought that. She had seen evil, in her brother and her father, the evil of good intentions gone wrong and the e...
Whatever it is, don’t do it!” said Catarina. “It’s a bad idea.” “And why do you say that?” “Because they’re the only kind you have,” she said. “I have known you a long time, and I am absolutely certain on this subject. If you ar...
A parabatai. Like he was. And Jace knew, too, what that faded rune meant: a parabatai whose other half was dead. He felt his sympathy leap toward Brother Zachariah, as he imagined himself without Alec, with only that faded rune to remind him where on...
Alec had his arms around Magnus and was kissing him, full on the mouth. Magnus, who appeared to in a state of shock, stood frozen. Several groups of people- Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike- were staring and whispering. Glancing to the side, Simo...
You look happy," he said to Clary. He swiveled his gaze to Jace. "And a good thing for you that she does." Jace raised an eyebrow. "Is this the part where you tell me that if I hurt her, you'll kill me?" "No," said Simon, "If you hurt Clary, she's qu...
You could dress it up with a sequined headband,” Magnus suggested, offering his boyfriend something blue and sparkly. “Just a thought.” “Resist the urge, Alec.” Simon was sitting on the edge of a low wall with Maia beside him, though she ap...
I wouldn't change it," Simon said. "I wouldn't give up loving you. Not for anything. You know what Raphael told me? That I didn't know how to be a good vampire, that vampires accept that they're dead. But as long as I remember what it was like to lov...
I cannot explain love. 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 seeme...
You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you a...
People were intrinsically selfish, and many hated the idea of a woman in charge of the Institute. They would not put themselves at risk for her. Only a few weeks ago he would have said the same thing about himself. Now, knowing Charlotte, he realized...
She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. He had wondered once why love was always phra...