"Did I hurt you in the parking lot?""No, m'lady. I fell, so I could put a tracker on your car."Great."

"Everybody has something, that one thing they must do to feel happy. I think this is yours, and I want you to be happy. You don't have to do it, but it's here if you choose to come back to it."

"Why had I wasted all my time pretending to be someone I wasn't? I was tired, so very, very tired of standing on my own brakes. I felt...right. I felt free."

"You might want to decide fast. We live in a dangerous world. If you see a chance to be happy, you have to fight for it, so later you have no regrets."

"Kate's Speciality: Killing things, with much bloodshed. Talking trash, infuriating authority. Driving Beast Lord crazy."

"We can get you a throne with snakes. I'll stand next to you and roar at anybody who fails to grovel. Fear Kate Daniels. She is a mighty and terrible ruler. Grendel can anoint the petitioners with his vomit. It'll be great . . ."

"It took a qualified wizard to detect a summoning in progress. It required only a half-literate idiot with a twitch of power and a dim idea of how to use it to attempt one. Before you knew it, a three-headed Slavonic god was wreaking havoc in downtown Atlanta, the skies were raining winged snakes, and SWAT was screaming for more ammo."

"She put her hand on her hip. "Where are you going?""To the boat. You called me Lord Bill again. That means we're cool."Cerise slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand and followed him."

"He chuckled into my hair. My body decided this would be a fine moment to remember that his body was wrapped around mine and his body was muscular, hard, and hot, and my butt was pressed against his groin. Cuddled up by a dragon. No, thank you. Let me off this train."If you keep wiggling, things might get uncomfortable, he said into my ear, his voice like a caress. "I'm doing my best, but thinking about baseball only takes you so far."

"So you want me to track down a supernaturally fast sniper who can disappear into thin air, retrieve your maps, and do it so nobody finds out what I'm doing or why?''Exactly.'I sighed. 'I'll get the paperwork."

"An evil spark flared in his eyes. "Trade: raccoon for some answers."

"Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say 'please.'"I stared at him, shocked. The smile widened. "You will say 'please' before and 'thank you' after." Nervous laughter bubbled up. "You've gone insane. All that peroxide in your hair finally did your brain in, Goldilocks."

"Oh, Gods."His eyes shone with want and predatory satisfaction. "The name's William. It's a common mistake."

"Mahon's wife stared down at us. Her hands went to her hips. "Which one of you idiots wants to explain to me what the hell is going on?"With great effort I raised my arm and pointed in Mahon's general direction. "Him."

"I wasn't even that lovable to begin with. I was a selfish ass, but somehow something I did made this man love me, deeply and without reservations. He knew things about me that I would die to keep secret. I trusted him more than I trusted anyone in my life. I mattered to him. He was suffering and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to see him happy. I loved him so much."

"Man can't handle the chaos. Oh, you can understand it in the abstract, as long as you don't think about it too hard. But at the core of it, whenever humans come against chaos, they deal with it in one of three ways. ... Faced with chaos you will either ignore it, dance around it, or you will go mad."

"When she looked at him with those dark eyes, Nassar felt the urge to say something intelligent and deeply impressive. Unfortunately, nothing of the kind came to mind."

"Failure happened. The trick was to accept the risk and try anyway."

"I have a serious question.""I will give a serious answer.""Can a god be killed?"The humor drained from Roman's face. "Well, that depends on if you're a pantheist or a Marxist.""What's the difference?""The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him."

"Andrea raised her hand. "This is the hand that slapped Aunt B."Maybe you should have it gold-plated."Here, you can touch it, since you're my best friend."

"Jack didn't fully get Jesus. Audrey tried to explain it, and he could repeat it back to her, word for word, but he still didn't comprehend most of it. The best he could gather was that Jesus lived long ago, told people to be nice, and they killed him for it. At the end, he asked who was Jesus' necromancer and if he was in the Bible, then Kaldar couldn't stop laughing and had to sit down."

"We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:IM-1: Infectious Magic AreaDo Not EnterAuthorized Personnel OnlyA second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:Keep out, stupid."We aren't going to keep out, are we? Ascanio asked."No."Awesome."

"Kid 1: *examining my gorgeous strawberry and blueberry pies*: Wow, Mom, your pies don't look awful this time.Me (Ilona): ...~A little later~Kid 2: *wandering into the kitchen*Kid 1: Hey, you've got to see these pies. *opening the stove*Kid 2: Wow. They are not ugly this time.Kid 1: I know, right?"

"Georgie, stop trying to resurrect the shoes. They were never alive in the first place."

"Just wait until he figures out I shut him out of his slut hut."

"Help me, I can't breathe, your ego is pushing all the air out of the room."

"The last time Assistant Principal Parker called, a girl in the school's locker room had accused Julie of being a whore during the two years she'd spent on the street. My kid took exception to that and decided to communicate that by applying a chair to the offending party's head. I'd told her to go for the gut next time- it left less evidence."

"How can it not exist? What does that- A tiny grey body shot in front of the Land Rover. "Squirrel!Mad Rogan swerved to the side, trying to avoid the suicidal beast. The SUV hit a curb and jumped. For a terrifying second, we almost flew, weightless. My heart leaped into my throat. The heavy vehicle landed back on the pavement with a thud. The squirrel leapt into the grass on the other side.I remembered to breathe. "Thank you for not killing the squirrel."You're welcome, although now I want to go back and strangle it."

"Kaldar almost never stops and thinks about the consequences of his actions. Something is fun or not fun, and my brother's fun often lands him in interesting places such as jails or castles belonging to California robber barons. Where other people see certain death, my brother sees an opportunity for a hilarious, thrilling adventure. But when I got the tattoo, Kaldar warned me that marrying her was a bad idea."

"He raised his hand in a peaceful gesture. "You need to relax a bit, dove. Like Mouse over there. You trust me, don't you, Mouse?""Nope!""Ahhh, I'm hurt. Nobody likes me."

"One day, she'd find a way to live her life to the fullest. She was sure of it. She just had no idea how she would manage it."

"You can do without sleep or without food, but not without both and sleep wasn't an option."

"The mage pulled my knife out of his side and looked at it. "Nice knife. The voice was deep but female.I threw my second knife. The blade bit into the mage's chest. Shit. Missed the neck. "Here, have another one."

"Hey, would you look at that shit?"I turned on my heel. The patrons who'd fled at the first hint of trouble had come back and were enjoying the spectacle."Clear out!" I barked.They paid me no mind. Asshole innocent bystanders."

"So crosses don't do anything against your kind?" Sean asked."No," Arland said. "There is no mystical force repelling us.""Then why?""We're forbidden to kill a creature in a moment of prayer or invocation of their deity. Well, we can, technically, but you have to do penance and purify yourself and nobody wants to spend weeks praying and bathing themselves in the sacred cave springs. The water's only a fraction warmer than ice. When one of you holds up a cross, it's difficult to determine whether you're praying, invoking, or just waving it around. So the sane strategy is to back away."

"Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can."

"I glanced at Derek. The boy wonder didn't melt into a pile of goo, although his gaze was glued to Rowena's chest. Avoiding eye contact. Good strategy."

"Sh!t. F_ck sh!t.'....'Sh!t f_ck would have also been accepted."

"Since I've moved here, you have shown up at my door eight times. I obey the laws, I pay my taxes, and I haven't even gotten a parking ticket in my entire time as a driver. Yet if anything at all happens in the neighborhood, you appear at my door. I bet if a meteorite fell somewhere in the subdivision, you would be here asking me if I personally launched it out of my doomsday cannon."

"I trusted her about as far as I could throw her. I was strong and she was small, but it still wasn't very far."

"What's that?""That's my attack poodle."

"He leaned toward me. Suddenly the space between us shrank."I will do everything in my power to ensure your survival, and should the need arise, I will put myself between danger and you." His voice was quiet and intimate. "Do not hesitate to use me as your shield."His voice sent tiny shivers through me.Wow."

"If I lost him here, to this idiotic fight, after I fought and guarded him for two weeks, after I cried and thought he was dying, I would find him in the afterlife and I would murder him again."

"You will show that thing to me and from now on, I will deal with them."I opened my eyes really wide and fluttered my eyelashes at him. "I'm sorry, I must've missed your coronation ceremony. Silly me."

"At the door, Audrey called, "Are you coming?""No, just breathing hard, love." He glanced at her and was rewarded by an outraged glare, followed by, "Oh, my God!"

"We have to stop anyway. I don't want you to regret this later. And I don't want your head to explode.""Really? You're so good that my head would explode?"It took him a moment. His expression changed from intense to speculative. "It's a possibility. I'm not a doctor, but Doolittle says it could happen.""That's a lot of expectation to live up to.""I exceed expectations."So modest, too."

"You're right, my problems are the biggest problems ever," George said. "No, honestly, it's horrible to be me. I'm rich, talented, and I make girls cry.""How do you make girls cry, exactly?"George turned to her. His blue eyes widened. His lovely face took on a forlorn, deeply troubled expression. He leaned forward, and, in a theatrical whisper, said, "My past is tragic. I wouldn't want to burden you with it. It's a pain I must suffer alone. In the rain. In silence."

"It seems that we had...not a better education, per se, but perhaps more incentive to use it. They learn, but they hardly think."

"Breaking into the house in the middle of the night just wasn't his style. He did his best work in plain view, and, usually, his tongue was doing most."

"I can't give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you'd set it on fire."