“But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it.”

“You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?”

“Isabelle glanced back at them. "They're staring at you. Maybe their master died and they're looking for another vampire to own them. You could have pets." She grinned."Or," Simon said ,"maybe they're here for the hash browns.”

“They say you cannot love two people equally at once,” she said. “And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well. And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did.”

“You never really hate anyone as much as someone you cared about once.”

“Do you think it's possible to do something so bad, even if you didn't mean to do it, that you can never come back from it? That no one can forgive you?"Luke looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he said, "Think of someone you love, Simon. Really love. Is there anything they could ever do that would mean you would stop loving them?”

“She made an impatient noise. "By the Angel, you don't know anything about your kid, do you? Do you even really know how vampires are made?""Well, when a mommy vampire and a daddy vampire love each other very much ... ”