“I'm really about as good at relaitionships as I am at being a vampire. I'm kind of a smart but surprisingly inept kind of girl.”

“That took all of three minutes," he pointed out, sprinkling red pepper across his noodles."And was kind of anticlimactic," Mal said, "since you just stared at the microwave the entire time. I figured you'd at least give some kind of invocation, maybe some gnawing the plastic. Growling." She ate another forkful of spaghetti, then offered, "Clawing the ground. Barking.""I'm a vampire, not a corgie.”

“Lily," Mom said, "we need to talk."I don't think I'm ruining the surprise by pointing out that nothing good happens when someone starts a speech like that.”

“As I'm not currently being chased, I see no need to run.”

“You're perfect- beautiful, intelligent, intractable in a kind of... attractive way. Headstrong, but a good strategist. An amazing fighter.""But that's not enough?""It's too much. You think I haven't thought about what it might be like to return to my rooms at the end of the night and find you there- to find you in my bed, to have your body and your laugh and your mind? To look across a room and know that you were mine- that *I'd* claimed you. *Me.* Ethan Sullivan. Not the four-hundred-year-old vampire, not the child of Balthasar or the Novitiate of Peter Cadogan. Me. Just me. Just you and me.”

“Have I ever waxed poetic about the glory that is the fuzzy-chested vampire wearing nothing but cowboy boots?”

“Now that, my friends, is what we vampires call a good exit.”