“Seclusion wasn't good for anyone; it made you forget how to protect yourself.”

“The hero was the sort of character you could feel yourself falling in love with, no matter how much you tried to convince yourself that he wasn't real”

“At least it would have been perfect, if it wasn't for my mother.”

“I sat down on the grass and looked up at Brae. He was still shirtless and - although it pained me a little to even think it - it suited him. He was in really good shape and he looked less uptight without it, more relaxed. If it wasn't for his weird silver hair he could have looked perfectly ordinary. Better than ordinary in fact.”

“I'm not trying to avoid you,' I replied lamely, but what else could I say? Sorry Brae but when I first came down to meet you I had no idea how hard it was going to be to avoid telling you that I was turning into a grotesque monster and I am worried that there is a good chance I could wake up one morning with a sudden lust for your blood. Somehow I didn't think that would go down particularly well.”

“Reading always calmed me down: filling my head with other - made up - people's problems and conflicts made my own seem less terrible, less real.”

“It was exactly the sort of thing I needed to be reading that afternoon: a story where, no matter how bad things got, you knew everything was going to turn out fine in the end.”