My greatest friend is truth.

I like pink.”Lucius sniffed. “It’s just red’s sorry, weak cousin.

Why do humans always look at these things from the wrong perspective? Predators deserve our sympathy, too.

I was wrong to insult you, and not only because you are my hosts. I am afraid that I mistook kindness for weakness. My apologies. I stand – only with your aid – profoundly corrected.

No, Lucius is harmless,’ I fibbed. If you don’t count the fact that he thinks he’s a warrior prince representing a semi-cannibalistic race of undead bat people.

On the stage Tristen bent over the piano, his fingers swift and sure, his blond hair gleaming under the spotlight. I glanced around at the audience, watching their faces, gratified that they were as captivated...

Stupid Romanian bloodsucker. He was lucky I hadn’t bestowed another exalted scar on his imperial body.

Where do you. come from?” Frank challenged, puffing his chest, a little bolder now that he could breathe. “Some of us are starting to wonder.””I come from civilization,” Lucius retorted. “You wouldn’t be familiar with...

Fear is the worst kind of grave, because it buries one alive.

Lucius shrugged. “Perhaps in time you will find it useful.””Sure. I’ll keep it on my shelf right next to The Idiot’s Guide to Becoming a Mythical Creature.”Lucius actually laughed. “Very funny. I didn’t know you...

As you wish, of course.” Lucius lowered the volume on an old record player, which spun a warped vinyl disk that wailed unfamiliar music, scratchy and whiny, like cats fighting. Or a coffin with rusty...

She, of all people, knew the sacred trust that word — “librarian” — implied. Because a librarian was supposed to to be a spiritual, intellectual mentor who kept your secrets and didn’t give you a...

I knew that most people would consider us too young to talk about lifelong commitments or marriage, but I couldn’t imagine taking her to bed without that promise. Even if it meant never being with...

Everybody should have a librarian.

Enduring pain is like causing pain.

Why did I sign up for this?”Because we grow by challenging ourselves.

Ranerio wrapped his hand around mine, guiding my fingers like Lucius had done when he’d shown me the latch behind the dressing-room door mirror. But while the warrior I loved had been offering me an...

I must endure, fighting the temptation simply to become slack-jawed like most of my school ‘peers’ (they wish!), who will themselves into a collective, vacant, trancelike state for the duration of each class. (Although I...

It is strange how love is a source for power––can spur the desire to fight to the death, or to fight back from something that seems like death for long enough to write a coherent...

One should never confuse fashionable with beautiful

You’re a wrestler, right, Jake?” Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening’s entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we’d throw a few burgers on the...

This is eternity, Antanasia,” he said, both warning and imploring. “Eternity.

Jessica. For god’s sake,” he said. “Allow me to do at least one common courtesy for you. In spite ow what ‘women’s lib’ teaches you, chivalry does not imply that women are powerless. On the...

As you know, I have always been curious about our immortality… how it feels to live on and on through time….I need speculate no longer, I have sampled eternity in Miss Campbell’s fifth period “social...