"Ask yourself what a man without guile might do to your body in the dark."

"We don't have dealings. He just stalks me. I'm popular like that."

"I was supposed to be powerless, and as a result they failed to see that I possessed claws."

"Death was not the scariest thing out there; no, the denial of it could be far worse."

"Some things are not supposed to be forgotten, these are the things which make us human."

"A story unwritten is without beginning or end. But in its potential lies another story; and in the heartbeat before pen meets page, both stories exist at once, reflecting endless permutations of the other, before one of them disappears forever."

"That's how it started: a series of small hurts and excuses between two people that built up slowly, widening over time to form a vast and yawning divide."

"You're like a half-tamed creature, still shy of the bridle. 'Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.' But freedom is an illusion, anyway."

"No. I made that choice. I let all that anger and pain get twisted up in my thoughts for you. He leaned in. "It fucking kills me. Every night. I relive what I did to you every night. His forehead rested against mine. "Until you, he said softly, "I never felt truly helpless."

"I feel I could kill. I feel that I might like it. And I know that this should scare me. But it doesn't. It excites me. I am in Plato's cave, watching the shadows and fraught with the desire to hunt what casts them."

"People only picked the pretty, sweet-smelling flowers. The ones with thorns were left alone."

"When they figure out how to bottle up orgasms and sell them as a food additive, I'll be first in line."

"Being depressed and suicidal doesn't mean wanting to kill yourself every moment of every day. It may be a fixed obsession, but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of your head. Rather, it means the world takes on the very cut and dry, black and white, unilateral aspect of a flowchart."

"If one has never known freedom, it is easy to be blind to the gridirons composing one's cell."

"So you thought you could shit and eat at the same time. How disgustingly convenient."

"In a fight between a shifter and a witch, the shifter would often win-but only if they could keep the witch from speaking, usually by severing the throat or tearing out the tongue. If the witch was powerful enough, and quick enough, physical size didn't matter. Catherine had heard of the horrible ways the witches could kill their victims. Cooking them alive from the inside out, restricting oxygen flow through the nasal and oral passages by creating a vacuum, drowning them with vapor pulled from the very air.It made fights between shifters look almost humane by comparison."

"Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken."

"Such a dark green, his eyes. They reminded her of the forest, of all the dangers lying dormant behind that verdant cloak of leaves."

"Nothing is as deadly as the love of a powerful man."

"What a joke, coming from a woman who worked for the fashion industry. Really. Starving yourself to fit into a size zero - why did that size even exist? Zero referred to the absence of something, but what did it mean in terms of a model's measurements? Her fat? Or her presence? How much could you cut away before the person herself vanished? It was hypocritical, that's what it was. I said as much, adding, "If you're so keen on me being healthy then you should have no problem accepting me for the way I am. That's what's healthy, Mom. Not being focused on all this freaky weight-loss stuff."

"We're all hunters in my family, you know. Deer, ducks, damsels."

"Why did this keep happening? Why her? Perhaps there was some pheromone certain people omitted, perceivable only on a wavelength unique to those individuals who preyed on them."

"Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.It was his birthright."

"Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well."

"Keep calm. You have the forest in your blood."

"Don't tell me it's going to fucking be okay! I am not okay with being that fucker's pinata!"

"She had come into the garden expecting summer roses and had instead been caught in a bank of twisted, thorny, frostbitten vines."

"If the whole world seems like it's against you, it helps to know that you've still got home. A safe place. It just takes one person-a teacher, a friend, a parent. If I didn't have you and Dad, if you hadn't made it so clear you loved me as much as you did, or if you'd said, 'yeah, why don't you do it, and put yourself out of our misery, just shut up,' I would have killed myself. I really would have. I spent most of those days wishing I were dead anyway, and what always stopped me was the fact that doing so would destroy the lives of the only people who ever cared about me."

"I'm sorry I missed the meeting and hurt your little feely-weels okay?"

"I'm not going to force you into anything you don't want. But I'm also not going to take a vow of chastity and pine away for you, or whatever the hell it is that men do in romance novels these days. I have needs. I'd rather satisfy them with you, but if you don't want me I suppose I'll just have to find someone else. Might take me a while, but I'll make do. I always have before."