“But some things are just too dangerous to live, I suppose.”

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

“Just remember, girls: The young male vampire is a predator by nature. Some boys may look at you not only as a romantic interest, but as prey...”

“December is celebrated quite heartily here in the United States. Aggresively, one might say. Every conceivable space is corseted with strands of twinkle lights, buildings are smothered beneath greenery, and a mass mania for erecting oversized, inflatable, waving "snowmen" in front of homes erupts amid the populace. It's quite a hysteria- and the evergreen trees are not just a myth, Vasile. People really do purchase them, in abundance. They are for sale everywhere. Imagine paying for the privilege of dragging a filthy piece of forest into your living area for the purpose of bedecking it with glass balls and staring at it.Why a tree? If one needed to display glass balls-and I highly discorage it-why not just a case of some sort? A rack?”

“And maybe I was a little intense. But not as much as the princess who marched into that court in a very unprofessional pair of jeans and a T-shirt, looking like she had gone to hell and back--and was about to drag the rest of us back there with her, just like I kinda planned to do.I knew it in a split second--and everybody else knew it too, even old Fabio--that we weren't just seeing a princess standing there in a pair of jeans and boots.We were all getting our first glimpse of the next queen.”

“I didn't just want to be just Mrs. Lucius Vladescu, or a princess, even. I wanted to be a queen.”

“Lucius needs you. He mourns you. He loves you. It's very unusual for a vampire to truly love. Some hold that real love between vampires is a myth. That we are too vicious by nature.But Lucius does. He loves you--as you love him.”