“Vampires were hardly the monsters we were made out to be in fairy tales and television shows. We were hardly different from humans, but for the genetic mutation, fangs, silvering eyes, and periodic penchant for blood. What? I said hardly different.”

“I don't feel that we were savages. We were in a savage land that made us hard, but we were not savages. Savages today are different, different in all ways. Their savagery is done in technical ways, so they are not called savages anymore. I don't know what savage means, really. There are good and bad in every race. There are traditional values that are good and bad. That goes for everybody.”

“If a book is made up of things that are hard to believe, then we were like something out of a book.”

“In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don't measure things like that with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction you thought was right.”

“I wouldn't settle for the easy path; I would be someone extraordinary, no matter how hard it made things right now. But now, looking back, I wonder if we weren't just as bad as the bitches and cliques we made fun of, thinking we were different, above them all.”

“But it was time to realize that I wasn't Cinderella, and no matter how hard I wished it were true, life wasn't a fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after.”