“... he feels the darkness of the grave pressing around the fire and infecting his vision so that there seems to be no separation between the living and the dead, a child born with a mud wasp's nest for a heart and its eyes already pocketed with dust, ready to be clapped into a box and dropped down a hole.”

“His “s’s” in “something” and “this” were so sharp that it seemed his mouth was a nest of wasps.”

“The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it.”

“Han spotted a child‟s homespun dolly in the ditch, pressed into the mud. He reined in, meaning to climb down and fetch it so he could clean it up for his little sister. Then he remembered that Mari was dead and had no need of dollies anymore.Grief was like that. It gradually faded into a dull ache, until some simple sight or sound or scent hit him like a hammer blow.”

“Then Christian made the fatal mistake of looking into her eyes. Suddenly he couldn’t move a muscle. They smoldered with a terrible black anger even as her mouth returned his kiss. It was as if they were two separate beings, the sweetness of her mouth upon his, and the darkness of her terrible eyes draining the life out of him. Christian could feel her heart racing, the fury of her blood uncontrollable, and he knew that if she couldn’t rein it in somehow, he would be lost. Already his hunger eviscerated him, he could feel the holes in his gut as those eyes, so blackly terrifying—hers but not hers, sucking everything from him, taking, feeding … killing. He felt wetness on his face.Somehow, she’d become the vampire.”

“This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, --what declaimers!”