“She wasted and grew so thin that she no longer was a little girl, but the shadow of a little girl. The flame of her life flickered so faintly that it appeared sufficient to blow at it to extinguish it. Stas understood that death did not have to wait for a third attack to take her and he expected it any day or any hour.”

“The little girl knew if she bit any member of her family, they would get rabies too, and she died without ever having been petted. I cried so hard Mrs. Underwood had to take me to the school nurse.”

“The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked...”

“Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?"Her eyes popped wide open, and then began flickering wildly from Edward to Seth to me, around and around."Not the same?" she snarled in her little girl's soprano. "Impossible!”

“When the only answer a little girl ever receives is no, from her parents or her teachers or her world, at some point she stops asking for what she wants. She begins to expect nothing, so as not to be disappointed when that exactly what she gets. But, it turns out, I do have wants.”

“This was not some pretty little girl, coyly flirtatious, delicately stimulated. This was the mature female of the species, vivid, handsome and strong demanding that all the life within her be matched. Her instinct would detect any hedging, any dishonesty, any less than complete response to her - and then she would be gone for good.”