“Normally, Julia liked her romance novels to be a little edgier, with leather-clad, tattooed vampires that had drug problems or were once sex slaves”

“It was my TBR-my TO Be Read stack. The usual subjects were there. Chick lit. Action. A Pulitzer Prize winner. A romance novel about a pirate and a damsel in a low-cut blouse (What? Even vampire enjoys a little bodice ripping now and again.)”

“I know people think erotica is just a romance novel with rougher sex. It's not. If it's a subgenre of anything, it's horror.Horror? Really?Romance is sex plus love. Erotica is sex plus fear.”

“MEG (to Dante, the vampire):“Vampires aren’t as cool as I expected them to be. In romance novels, vampires are all dark and broody and sexy. In real life, you talk an awful lot about stocks.”

“Maybe she should stop reading those damn romance novels. They were giving her crazy expectations.”

“And so the twins had remained virgins. Julia and Valentina watched all of their high school and college friends disappear one by one into the adult world of sex, until they were the only people they knew who lingered in the world of the uninitiated. "What was it like?" they asked each friend. The answers were vague. Sex was a private joke: you had to be there.”