“This wasn't the first time I'd woken up as a captive. It wasn't even the second. I so needed to reevaluate my life choices.”

“When I was a boy I used to love pizza, and whenever my father took me to the pizzeria I'd order two slices. And I'd sit and he'd watch me wolfing down the first slice with my eyes on the second. I wasn't even tasting that first slice. And one day my father said to me, "Son, you need to learn that while you're eating the first slice of pizza, eat the first slice. Because right now you're eating the second slice before you've finished the first.”

“I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.”

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”

“I'd witnessed for the first time in my vampire- obsessed existence an actual vampire bite. The only problem was that it wasn't my neck being bitten.”

“This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved.”