“We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood.”“That’s romantic?”I had to smile. “Romantic with a capital ‘R.’ You know, like Byron and Coleridge.”He gave a mock shudder. “Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit.”I snorted. “I didn’t have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover.”“Get out.”“Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous.”“That girl is . . .”“My best friend,” I filled in sternly.“I was only going to say she’s unique.”

“You persist in this romantic vision of what it is to be a vampire, but despite my best efforts to curb it I have a taste for blood.”

“Thank you for getting me," I try to say. My lips are so tired they don't want to move."Anytime,Zara.Really.I mean it." He seems to be smelling my hair."I know you hate me and everything but we should be friends," I tell him, closing my eyes."I don't hate you," he says. "That's not it at all.""What is it then? Are you a victim of parthenophobia?""Parthenophobia?""Fear of girls.""You are so strange." He moves back even closer to me, this wicked glint in his eyes like he's trying hard not to snort-laugh at me. His hand presses against the side of my head. Nobody has ever touched me like this before, all gentle and romantic, but strong at the same time. "I'm not afraid of girls.""Then why haven't you kissed any?"For a second his eyes flash. "Maybe the right one hasn't come around yet.”

“Suddenly, this romantic agony was enriched by a less romantic one: I had to go to the bathroom. Needless to say, I couldn't let her know about this urge, for great lovers never did such things. The answer to "Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" was not "In the men's room, Julie.”

“The Romantic journey was usually a solitary one. Although the Romantic poets were closely connected with one another, and some collaborated in their work, they each had a strong individual vision. Romantic poets could not continue their quests for long or sustain their vision into later life. The power of the imagination and of inspiration did not last. Whereas earlier poets had patrons who financed their writing, the tradition of patronage was not extensive in the Romantic period and poets often lacked financial and other support. Keats, Shelley and Byron all died in solitary exile from England at a young age, their work left incomplete, non-conformists to the end. This coincides with the characteristic Romantic images of the solitary heroic individual, the spiritual outcast 'alone, alone, all, all alone' like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and John Clare's 'I'; like Shelley's Alastor, Keats's Endymion, or Byron's Manfred, who reached beyond the normal social codes and normal human limits so that 'his aspirations/Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth'. Wordsworth, who lived to be an old man, wrote poems throughout his life in which his poetic vision is stimulated by a single figure or object set against a natural background. Even his projected final masterpiece was entitled The Recluse. The solitary journey of the Romantic poet was taken up by many Victorian and twentieth-century poets, becoming almost an emblem of the individual's search for identity in an ever more confused and confusing world.”

“Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all.”