She wore red lipstick the next time that I saw her, though her hair was more voluminous with dirt than before. Owing, like everything else about these girls, to the fertility of rats.

The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to go back to living in a sewer-pipe? And eating other people's garbage? Because that's what rats do. But the fact is, we aren't rats anymore. We are something Dr. Schultz has made. Something new.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat. And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants.

OK, Josh said evenly, I've seen men made of mud, I guess I can accept spying rats. Do they talk? he wondered aloud.Don't be ridiculous, Flamel snapped, They're rats.Josh really didn't think it was a ridiculous suggestion.

Where's Simon? Clary interrupted.Isabelle wobbled. He's a rat, she said darkly.Did he do something to you? Alec was full of brotherly concern. Did he touch you? If he tried anything-She's drunk, said Jace, beginning to turn away in disgust.I'm not, Isabelle said indignantly. Well, maybe a little, but that's not the point. The point is, Simon drank one of those blue drinks- I told him not to, but he didn't listen- and he turned into a rat.