"The truth was...he was in love with her. Totally over-the-line, no-going-back, not-even-dead-would-he-part kind of shit."

"You are a manipulator.I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer."

"The hardest thing is being with other people - it's like they're on a different wavelenght, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate."

"Someone put opera on inside the house. Someone changed it to hip-hop, thank God. Someone started a shower. Someone vacuumed. Again.Life. In all its mundane majesty.And you couldn't take advantage of it if you were sitting on your ass in the shadows... whether it was in actuality, or metaphorically because you were trapped in an attic's darkness."

"Well, wasn't this a night for firsts. Sex. Arson. Pants."

"Qhuinn's eyes shifted away from his buddy--and just happened to measure the distance down to the stone patio below. Hmm . . . doing a swan dive onto all that slate might just get the images of those two out of his head... of course, it would also turn his brain into scrambled eggs, but really, was that such a bad thing?"

"Caregivers had to take care of themselves, and part of that meant having a life beyond whatever illness had put them in their cole."

"They massacred the servants before killing my parents. I saw it all through a knothole in the wood. As I said, my eyes were better back then."

"Letting go meant you accepted what couldn't be changed. You didn't try to hold on to hope in order to coerce a change in fortune...nor did you battle against superior forces of fate and try to make them capitulate to your will...nor did you beg for salvation because you assumed you knew better. Letting go meant you stared at what was before you with clear eyes, recognizing that unfettered choice was the exception and destiny the rule."

"God, he was probably too young to be this old, but life had a way of being about experience, rather than calendar days."

"The thing was, the places of your life, like the clothes you wore and the car you drove and the friends and associates you had, were a product of the way you lived."

"The weight of the dead was heavier than the pounds of the body."

"Gallows humor is part of having a doctor in the house. Deal with it."

"You've won the evolutionary lottery: You're a vampire. Let's go to Disneyland!"

"Sometimes your whole life could hinge on a fraction of an inch. Or the beat of nanosecond. Or the knock on a door.Kind of made a male believe in the divine. It really did."

"God, now she knew what decent men felt like, the disquiet before taking someone for their first time."

"An active mind didn't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers."

"I was dead unit you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came...and I was awakened."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistable urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee."

"Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were."

"You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn't know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life.After they were gone?That was all you thought about.Day and night."

"A book unopened alters not the ink on its pages. What is there is there."

"Rhage exhaled slowly, air easing out of his nose. As he sank into his skin, he reveled in the perfection of peace. The heavenly silence. The great roaring absence."

"Okay, well...how's that water feeling, then?' 'Excuse me?' 'The Nile warm this time of the year?"

"Whoa. Fangs. She had fangs.She leaned in, prodded them a little. Eating with those puppies was going to take some getting used to, she thought.On impulse, she brought up her hands, turned her fingers into claws. Hissed.Cool."

"Look upon me, Mistress. Watch as I wither!"

"Terrific. A bisexual dominant vampire with kidnapping expertise."

"In the silence, she felt the past and the present shift and mix, but that was a mirage. There was no way to comfort the lost boy he'd been back then. But she had the grown male.She had him right in her arms, and for a brief moment of whimsy, she imagined that she was never, ever going to let him go."

"Sometimes in life, from out of a myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right " no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse."

"In this state, the club was The Wizard of Oz made obvious: All the magic that went on here night after night, all the buzz and excitement, was really just a combination of electronics, booze, and chemicals, an illusion for the people who walked through the front doors, a fantasy that allowed them to be whatever they weren't in their day-to-day lives."

"It felt odd to realize she was frightened more by what he might know, and not of what he might be."

"Falling into ruin was a bit like falling in love: Both descents stripped you bare and left you as you were at your core. And both endings are equally painful."

"Indeed, the human mind appeared to suffer from a crippling need to fabricate in the absence of concrete proof."

"His ears caught a sweet chiming noise, and a moment later a warm rush fell over his body. How we doing Rhage? Too hot? Butch's voice. Up close. The cop was in the shower with him. And he smelled Turkish tobacco. V must be in the bathroom too. Hollywood? This too hot for you? No. He reached around for the soap, fumbling. Can't see. Just as well. No reason for you to know what we look naked together. Frankly, I'm traumatized enough for the both of us. Rhage smiled a little as a washcloth scrubbed over his face, neck and chest."

"When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I was wrong. If I hadn't given the female my gun, the bird wouldn't have been shot. I was responsible even though I didn't pull the trigger."

"Life is such a glorious trauma, is it not?"

"Fear of change was a weakness."

"Man, it was a good thing vampires didn't get cancer. Lately he'd been chain-smoking like a felon."

"Michael Rafferty was a goodman. A solid man. He was never going to be Hugh Jackman handsome or Bill Gates rich or King of England powerful. But he was hers and he was Sean's and that was more than enough."

"The essential truth of life, he was coming to realize, wasn't romantic an took only two words to label: Shit. Happens."

"Butch tightened his grip on his cell and wished there were an app that let you reach through a phone and bitch slap someone."

"But then, gifts are like beauty, are they not. It is in the eye of the recipient that they find their seat, not in the hand of the giver."

"Wrath: What the hell are you supposed to ask?Rhage: I know! Who do you like the most? It's me right?Come on, you know it is. Come oooooonnnnn-Butch: If its you,, I'll kill myself.V: No, that just means she's blind.Rhage: It has to be me.V: She said she didn't like you at first.Rhage: Ah, but I won her over, which is more than anyone else can say about you, hot stuff.J.R.: I don't like anyone the bestWrath: Right answer.Rhage: She's just sparing all of you feelings. (grins, becoming impossibly handsome) She's so polite.J.R.: Next question?Rhage: Why do you like me the best?"

"He had been aware of the distance traveled by his heart, similar to the way a hiker became lost in the wilderness. A half mile out and you could still see where you had started, could easily find the way back home. But ten miles and a number of forks in your trail later and there was no going back. At that point, you had no choice but to marshal the resources to build yourself a shelter and put down fresh roots."

"Vengeance was one hell of a roommate."

"As Qhuinn looked at his best friend's handsome face, he felt as if he'd never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been. All that came to him was . . . I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don't know how to find you even though you're right in front of me."

"And mortal terror in a female was Z's favorite turn-on. He got off on it like most males favored crap from Victoria's Secret."

"Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die."

"And for all he had learned to bandage himself up on the outside, the wound remained just as bad and deep as the moment it had been made - when it became obvious that the one male he wanted above all others was never, ever going to be with him."

"Some things are destined to be -- it just takes us a couple of triesto get there."