“They shared a laugh, and then the silence that so often intruded on their discussion asserted itself once again, a gap born of equal parts weariness, familiarity and--conversely--the many differences that fate had created between those who had once gone about lives that were but variations on a single melody.”

“The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as the gap between those who worship and those who don't.”

“This showed once again that everyone had something different to lose in this battle. Some were concerned for their lives, and some for those they cared most about: rays, sea horses, even the chickens that ran free in the streets of the city because they couldn't all be caught in time.”

“She always thought Americans were too territorial. 'All those fences and flags,' she had once said, seeing very little difference between the two.”

“And so you worried about not remembering what happened in between the things you wrote down. You had lived those moments too. Where had they gone?”

“They always assumed that I did not speak. That I could not. So many had plotted my death, discussed it, laughed about it, even while I was in the same room, because they assumed I was mindless. Like one of the failures of their kind, born mad. But I was not a failure. I was what I was supposed to be. I was dhampir. And they never lived to tell anyone they were wrong.”