"We feel most alive when we are closest to death."

"Remember how it feels, Silent One. That murderous rage, and how it makes your blood boil. Remember, and let it carry you the rest of the way-only, learn to freeze it, as well, because the best killers are those who can put their desires on ice."

"All lines are gray in the dark."

"It's like an itch, isn't it? You can feel it in your throat. You want to scream for me."

"Knives and candlelight, he said, "how romantic."

"Conquest was not satisfying if it began with a surrender."

"You would do well to guard your tongue, lest it be stricken from you."

"You couldn't find your dick in the dark, you scheming, sleaze-mongering scumwad."

"People rarely ventured outside the realm of their own hurts. They believed their own suffering was obvious to all, but might as well have been wearing blinders for all that they noticed anyone else's."

"Come closer, my dears, let me give you a warning,Of the fate that befalls those who stay out past morning,In the darkest hours before the dawn,When witches roam and demons spawn,And children die with spirit gone,Magicked away in the gloaming."

"You wanted to see me, Professor?"

"Words were the bane of her existence. She drowned in them when all she wanted was silence, only to have them recede when one desperately-sought phrase would be the key to her salvation. Most things were like that: excess in times of abundance, and shortages in times of dearth. Life, she realized, was an unbalanced scale, and would never weigh in one's favor, struggle as one might."

"We spend much of our lives going about completely blind to reality, and yet we still have the gall to act victimized when it invariably catches up to us."

"Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a slippery slope of cruelty doomed to end in failure."

"There is no redemption in a cruel man's love."

"People say hate is like a poison - but they're wrong. It's like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder how you ever managed to get by without it. And then, eventually, you get to a point where you can't. It takes over your life, until hating becomes your reason for living."

"We both want you dead. I'm bringing the friendship bracelets to the next meeting."

"The Lord teaches forgiveness, but some things are unforgivable."

"All friends have secrets. We're like three-dimensional shapes on paper, we all have hidden sides. And there's some secrets we don't even reveal to ourselves."

"A woman isn't a whore for wanting pleasure. If it were unnatural, we would not be born with such drives."

"Sometimes evil didn't need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was."

"But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality."

"Sleeping is terrifying.When you close your eyes and surrender your consciousness to the void, you lose yourself-voluntarily-and you're trustingly assuming you'll find yourself back out of the labyrinth again.Usually you do.But sometimes you don't.It's that uncertainty, more than anything, which kills me. That I might not wake up, and wouldn't know it.That I could be dead, dreaming I'm alive."

"I was afraid and knew I had every right to be, but he had awakened a part of me that no longer cared."

"They said the shape-shifters fucked with the enthusiasm of animals-if they didn't devour you with the enthusiasm of one first."

"You were a well-respected agent, Michael, a rags-to-riches fairytale ending. Until you became disgraced. Now it appears your own organization wishes to be rid of you. Why is this?"My gun turned back into a pumpkin."

"Knowing and doing are two separate things, and don't always sync up in life."

"If I catch you, I might do anything. I might strip the skin from your bones as I drain you dry. Or I might drag you into my chambers and have you pleasure me in ways you cannot even imagine. I might even take mercy on you, and that would be the cruelest injustice of all, because for you, it would only be a temporary reprieve."

"What happened out there?"I almost got quarking toasted by a dragon."A dragon, he repeats, scandalized. "Are you mad? Or have you been skulking around the bars of Barbary XIII?"

"What once was had, forever lost; thy fate is destined, thy love star-crossed."

"It's true what they say, you know. First fuck. First love. First kill. You never forget your first."

"She started life with a number, not a name. Class: S, No. 13295. She has them memorized by rote, though nobody ever calls her that. The Scientists feel foolish addressing her in long, bewildering strings of alphanumerics. They have told her so themselves. To save time, they simply call her "Snow."

"I participate in BDSM, but I wasn't abused as a child. I don't hate women, or particularly enjoy hurting women. Sometimes I make them feel pain, but it's consensual, it serves a purpose-to get them off-and they can indicate that they wish me to stop at any time. I do like the power I get from total submission, and the trust that my partner puts in me to give me everything, from her mind to her body, while expecting nothing in return-except the understanding that I won't violate that trust."

"Valys also didn't think I was good enough for him. He made that clear every time he acted like a martyr forced to settle. But what he didn't understand was that if he thought I might not be good enough for him, he definitely wasn't good enough for me. I was well aware of my flaws, but I knew my merits, too; I shouldn't have to be anyone's second-best. Least of all, his."

"I didn't understand what it was about men-not all men, but a good portion of them-that turned a good, solid "NO into an "I'm just playing coy; try harder."

"Maybe in a way all living things are like flickering flames in a precarious night, always on the verge of being extinguished. Whether we kindle slowly but steadily, or go out in a brilliant burst of light and color, is our choice. Perhaps the most important choice we'll ever have."

"In my experience, the romance novels written about BDSM have about as much in common with actual BDSM relationships as a child playing with a jump rope."

"It wasn't that she was sad-sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired."

"For a moment, the cardboard sets come crashing down to reveal that squalling monster, reality, locked up in the confines of its man-made cage. It is a fearsome thing, beautiful, inherent only to itself. Faced with such naked, existential truths, I understand why humans worship flesh-eating monsters and bloodthirsty gods.But only for a moment."

"A quick and brutal fuck from behind usually served as an effective reminder of where you stood in the pack hierarchy."

"Only the cruelest hunters set their traps with terror and trepidation."

"That's not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask-no, demand-me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong to you. Never mind what it does to me. Never mind that each time I see you, I wonder if I'll ever hold you in my arms again, or be able to touch you without you cringing away like I'm a monster. I think it's fair to ask if there's an 'us,' my dear, because I suspect you're trying to use me just now. Tell me that's not cruel, and I'll let you go."

"I'd seen entire constellations of possibility I'd never previously been aware of, so blinded had I been by the bright, glaring stars of expectation. Freedom, I was beginning to think, had less to do with where you were, and was more about who you were trying to be."

"You mean you don't want to come in and hold my hand while I piss?"

"I was cyber-bullied before all those Myspace-related suicides, so my school principal wasn't really impressed when my mom complained about what was happening to me on my Xanga blog and on AIM chat."Get your life sorted out, you fucking scitzo [sic] dyke tranny bitch, one comment might say.Another comment would say something like, "I know she's reading this, she's so pathetic.And, perhaps most frightening of all: "I'm going to fuck you up until your mother bleeds."

"Fuck, Christina."Yes, fuck Christina. I think she'd like that."

"Time can be as fluid as water, and never in the way you'd like; it slows down to a standstill when you wish you could get things over with, and rushes by in a blur when you wish things would last."

"Mámá had always made it clear she believed girls who got raped deserved it. I hadn't done any of the things she said 'bad girls did,' though. I didn't parade myself around in sluttish clothes and make untoward advances. But Mámá had been wrong about everything else so far, so maybe she'd been wrong about that, too. Maybe it didn't matter whether you were bad or good, prudish or wanton: maybe just being female was enough, for some men. Maybe, like so much else, it was only about control. But then why do I feel so guilty?"

"Why do women always feel they have to settle for less?"

"I cannot breathe, or see, nor swim,My darkness is composed of him."