“The Vampires have a plan to take over the world?" I asked. I felt a bit dumb, gasping in surprise at every twist to the story and incredulously repeating all the important of bits. But somehow Carter's version of things made sense. I felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz when the green curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth.”

“This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell.”

“Katherine -I wondered if this was how Dorothy felt when she woke up in Oz with all the little people squawking ding dong, the witch is dead.”

“For a brief, weird minute I felt like Dorothy in Oz, walking down the street with Terric the doubtful, Shame the brainless, and heartless Zay.”

“So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt stars.”

“The only thing that kept me going was stories. Stories are hope. They take you out of yourself for a bit, and when you get dropped back in, you're different- you're stronger, you've seen more, you've felt more. Stories are like spiritual currency.”