The inside is packed with people. Lots of them crowding the bar, passing drinks back for people to carry to tables. A bunch of guys are pouring shots of vodka.”To Zacharov!” one toasts.”To open hearts...

please,Tana,please.’ -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

You’re yourself,” Tana said, grinning. “More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can’t see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.

I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don’t even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I’m going to have to get down, ideally...

He let out a hiss of pain,then smiled that crooked, sheepish smile he always fell back on when he was caught doing something bad. “Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to. I just- I’ve been lying here...

Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.

I can learn to live with guilt. I don’t care about being good.

She took a deep breath, “Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?” His expression turned very strange, almost as if she’d struck him, “yes,” he said finally. -Tana and Gavriel-page chapter 5

My view of writing “Coldest Girl in Coldtown” was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book–everything I like–trying to evoke...

People are fragile. They die of mistakes, of overdoses, of sickness. But mostly they die of Death.

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop,...

His voice had a faint trace of an accent she couldn’t place – one that made her pretty sure he was no local kid infected the night before-Tana on Gavriel-page 21-chapter 3

So you’ll teach me?” Val asked.Ravus nodded agin. “I will make you as terrible as you desire.””I don’t want to be – ,” she started, but he held up his hand.”I know you’re very brave,”...

Adventuring turned out to be boring. Zach thought back to all the fantasy books he’d read where a team of questers traveled overland, and realized a few things. First he’d pictured himself with a loyal...

His wax-white skin was cool to the touch when she brushed his neck to find the knot of cloth. She’d never been this close to a vampire,never realized what it would be like to be...

Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.

The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels...

Little mouse,” a voice said through the keyhole. “Don’t you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat’s delight?

I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,]...

I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are...

What an author doesn’t know could fill a book.

In the dream, Tana’s mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death.-Tana-page 21-chapter 4

No trouble ever got fixed late at night,” he said. “Midnight is for regrets.

Anyone who offers their heart on a silver platter deserves what they get.

She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone — desire so acute that it became despair.

She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can’t-see-monsters-monsters-can’t-see-me.

The truth is messy. It’s raw and uncomfortable. You can’t blame people for preferring lies.

Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but...

When we turn,is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?

Manie sans délire – insanity without delusion.

People don’t understand about the need to live simply. They make appointments all day. They even schedule their own deaths. The first time they’ll have freedom to really be themselves is when they no longer...

I got bored,” he says. “Besides, you know what’s creepier than walking around your dead brothers’ apartment? Sitting alone in a hearse in front of his apartment.

Her screams spiraled up into the night air

Dead or not, I have come for his heart and I will have it.

I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up.

He reached into the bag and drew out an odd array of manga, ripped paperbacks of books both classic and modern, and a small stack of crumpled magazines. “See, I even brought some things to...

This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.

Be careful,” Aidan called from the bed. “You don’t know what he might do.” “We all know what you’d do,though, don’t we?”-Gavriel, Tana, and Aidan-page 22-chapter 3

When Tana was six, vampires were Muppets, endlessly counting, or cartoon villains in black cloaks with red polyester lining.

She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

We all wind up drawn to what we’re afraid of, drawn to try to find a way to make ourselves safe from a thing by crawling inside of it, by loving it, by becoming it.

I survive at the edge of friends circles.

She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They’d find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we...

I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don’t know how to be this kind of villain.

You can’t go around making plans that have you getting killed as a by-product. Eventually one of them is going to work.

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.

I don’t want to be a vampire’ she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did.-Tana Bach-page 29-chapter 4

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read “Interview With the Vampire” a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel’s backstory] definitely came from those books:...

I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him. If he can rationalize what...