“Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.”

“Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.”

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

“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.”

“I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot of air.And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simpleform, a form that I am able to put into words, like this:Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.It's a cliché translated into words, but at the time I felt it not as wordsbut as that knot of air inside me. Death exists - in a paperweight, infour red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living andbreathing it into our lungs like fine dust.”

“I can't say what my first thought was as I sunk below the surface, because it was mostly a string of four-letter words.”