"Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren't sure which side you're on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn't make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing?"

"Accidental sex. He made it sound like I fell down, and there just happened to be an erection in the way."

"No name-calling truly bites deep unless, in some dark part of us, we believe it. If we are confident enough then it is just noise."

"Edward smiled, I smiled, even Bernardo smiled. Olaf just looked sinister."

"You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."

"Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly."

"Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror."

"He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead."

"In real life I do violence, but for psychic stuff I do other things better."

"My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people."

"Lately, when I didn't have room to bitch, I didn't. Maturity, at last."

"He made a small sigh, as he swallowed the first blood, then his mouth closed over my earlobe, mouth working at the wound, tongue coaxing blood from the wound. He pressed his body the length of mine, one hand cupping my turned head, the other playing down the line of my body. Maybe it was just blood, but I never stroked my steak while eating it."

"I spend most of my waking hours confronting and destroying things that I fear. A thousand-year-old master vampire was a tall order, but a girl's got to have a goal."

"His eyes widened just a bit, his lips flexed. I realized he was trying not to laugh. I hate it when people find my threats amusing."

"Twenty-three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of the Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind."

"Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think. Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real."

"Let's pretend it is a threat, because you need to understand that the other officers aren't keeping me safe from you; they're keeping you safe from me."

"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."

"Lust has less logic than love, sometimes, but it's easier to fight."

"The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies."

"There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself."

"When you live forever and don't age, it gives you time to hope."

"Zebrowski says that if you killed someone else just hide the body, he's not starting over on the paperwork."

"Men don't settle down because of the right woman. They settle down because they are finally ready for it. Whatever woman they're dating when they get ready is the one they settle down with, not necessarily the best one or the prettiest, just the one who happened to be on hand when the time got to be right. Unromantic, but still true."

"I just don't believe in helping people who are going to torture me. Though I don't see any bamboo slivers. How can you possibly torture someone without bamboo slivers?"

"Only those who have never known fear are allowed to think less of others for being afraid. Frankly, I think anyone who has never been afraid of anything in their entire life is either a liar or lacks imagination."

"Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different."

"Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job."

"I'd been willing to kill for the people I loved for a very long time, now I had to start living for them."

"Now that I'm being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I'm unabashedly genre. It's what I like to read, what I like to write."

"Whether vampires should have been declared 'alive' and full citizens of the United States of America was one of the big debates ranking right up there with gun rights and abortion. In a way all of them are about life and death-defining what life is, and what it isn't, and how far we'll go to protect, or take, it."

"Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You've taught me that bravery is being terrified and doing it anyway."

"I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus, also shown as Circus of Fear, was one of those movies."

"I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else."

"Perfection is an unattainable goal. It isn't going to be perfect. Just get words down on paper, and when you stumble to what you think is the end of the book, you will have hundreds of pages of words that came out of your head. It may not be perfect, but it looks like a book."

"Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?"

"I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will."

"It may be a crush, or hero worship (...), it may not be love, but if you've never felt anything stronger, how do you tell the difference?"

"When sex is necessary for the plot of a book, or a character development, then I don't shy away from it. Why should I?"

"If the eyes are the window to the soul, then Edward's in trouble 'cause no one is home."

"I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write."

"An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight."

"What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why."

"Sex is like crying, it does look pretty if you really do it."

"I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time."

"I want a kiss to be so believable it give the reader shivers."

"Love sucks. Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it's just another way to bleed."

"The sunken grave would fade away, probably in my lifetime. If I could avoid killer zombies for a few years. And vampires. And gun-toting humans. Oh, hell, the hot-spot would probably outlast me."

"What do you want?''I want to play,' he said.I stared at him. 'Just like that. You don't know what I'm involved in, but you want a piece of it.''Following you around lets me kill a lot of people."

"Why does anger makes people pretty? Rage doesn't. Rage makes you ugly, but a little anger, that just seems to add spice. One of nature's cruelties, or maybe it's to keep us from killing each other more often."