"This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses."

"Ben was taking her through the storm of grief. He was singing her through the rage and despair. He was singing her through the terrible loneliness, because there was no way to shut off grief, no way to cast it aside or fight against it. The only way to end grief was to go through it.As she realized that, his song began to change. It grew softer, sweeter, like the morning after a long cry, when your head still hurt but your heart was no longer broken."

"She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for."

"Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other's arms."

"Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way."

"Occasionally, there are battles in the sky. One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls."

"I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying."

"Crippled things are always more beautiful. It's the flaw that brings out beauty."

"His wax-white skin was cool to the touch when she brushed his neck to find the knot of cloth. She'd never been this close to a vampire,never realized what it would be like to be so near to someone who didn't breathe, who could be as still as any statue. His chest neither rose not fell. Her hands shook."

"Some things exist whether you believe in them or not."

"She tastes like every dark thought I've ever had."

"We all wind up drawn to what we're afraid of, drawn to try to find a way to make ourselves safe from a thing by crawling inside of it, by loving it, by becoming it."

"I don't want to be a vampire' she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did."

"You and your sister are very dear to each other. To show your regard, you give each other lovely bouquets of lies."

"In the dream, Tana's mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death."

"I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up.He called it his second smile."

"Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them."

"Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research."

"I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him. If he can rationalize what I did to him, it's easy to imagine how he rationalized what he did to me."

"The only way to end grief was to go through it."

"Changing is what people do when they have no options left."

"There's a tipping point with lies, a point where you've said something so many times that it feels truer than the truth."

"Her tragedy, if she had one, was to be as normal and average as any child ever born."

"Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them. Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse."

"Her screams spiraled up into the night air."

"Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways."

"She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me."

"You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it."

"I guess it's true, no one will ever love you like your family."

"I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria.But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense.All friendships are negotiations of power."

"The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don't deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they're going to go home one night and have the girl they've loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con."

"There's nothing quite as funny as someone else's misery - Cassel Sharpe."

"Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too."

"Please,Tana,please.' -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown."

"If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back."

"When we turn,is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?"

"She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered."

"Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die."

"Anyone who offers their heart on a silver platter deserves what they get."

"Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts."

"We labor under so many illusions about ourselves until we're stripped bare. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. You, distilled. You, boiled down like a sauce. But it's you as you always were, deep down inside."

"Nothing can happen more beautiful than death - Walt Whitman."

"Don't know. Don't care. I'm hopping on a bus and going until I can't go any farther. Until I find a place that feels like home.'He's quiet for a long time. 'How will you know what home feels like?'It hangs in the air between us, as frozen as our breaths. I don't have an answer."

"Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles."

"I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy."

"Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today's tasks."

"She looks honestly upset, but then, I've learned that I can't read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they're always lying."

"He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who'd gone before those heroes, about whether they'd been at each other's throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren't going to make it, weren't going to beat those long odds--that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed."

"Who cares about a test? There will be a million more quizzed in your life."

"His voice had a faint trace of an accent she couldn't place - one that made her pretty sure he was no local kid infected the night before."