“Before I took to the road, a friend tried to get me to go to a department store with him. He said it was to improve the place where I lived. He said," I want to know you are reading beneath this lamp. " This fellow was dying. He knew it and I did not. I think he was tucking me in. He was making sure all of his friends had the right lamps, the comfiest pillows, the softest sheets. He was tucking us all in for the night.”

“I have this friend, Jake," Mr. Mitchell says, sitting on the edge of his desk. "One day, I needed a favor. It wasn't a big favor, but I called him and told him I needed something. Know what he said?" We shake our heads."He said, 'Sure.' Before he eve knew what i was going to ask him. You know why?"We shake our heads again. "Because he trusted me not to ask him to do something he couldn't or wouldn't want to do. He knew that whatever i asked for, he would help me simply because he was my friend and I needed help. That's true friendship.”

“Maybe I had been making a greater monster of him than he really was, or maybe I was still under his influence, for I was certain that he wanted me to believe he was no more than a harmless man who happened to use vampirism to get what he desired. Some remnant of his mesmerism was still upon me. I had never been able to shake the feeling that he was tucked away in a corner of my mind, that he could read my thoughts, know what I was thinking. He had done something to me, but what that was, I had never been able to discover. All I knew was that the feeling had been with me since the morning I woke up and found myself in Venice.”

“I have decided to live,” he said quietly.That, too, was obvious from the way he’d changed in the past year. I felt his gaze as he spoke, heavier than usual along my skin. He had been my friend, and now offered more. Was willing to try more. But I knew: he was not the sort of man who loved easily, or casually. If I wanted him, I would have all of him, and he wanted all of me. All or nothing; that was as fundamental to his nature as light itself.I tried to joke. “It took you a year to decide that?”“Ten, yes,” Shiny replied. “This last year was for you to decide.”

“And I know Blake had a bunch of fucking problems going on the night he was shot. But Mouse here made sure the hired guns were dead before they could hurt him. I don’t know if I get to call him a hero, if that’s allowed, because I’m a bad man, and he was my friend. But he was a hero to me.”

“On his deathbed, my grandpa told me three things to remember for after he died. First he said, "You can't own a cat. Ever." Second he told me, "Friendly boys make friendly friends." Finally he said, "You were adopted, just like your father before you, and his father before him." "So," I said, "you were adopted?" "Of course not!" he replied. "Your father's not my son, just like he's not your father." And to this day I am still confused. I have no idea why I can't own a cat.”