“Oh, but I was an idiot. Wanting to be whatever magic she waited for, when I had no magic - only darkness or death to give. But it seemed in that one instant, when she turned to discover what was behind her, that I could have brought happiness to at least one mortal. Me and my dreams of goodness. I had always been a fool for them.”

“And I, a vampire who had seduced countless mortals in his impossibly long existence, was forced to admit that it was she, this beautiful young human female, who had instead seduced me.”

“You are unwilling to pay that price, even knowing that the consolation prize is not only to learn every philosophy that has ever existed, but ones which have not yet been conceived? Even knowing that if you do not accept, you will soon cease to learn anything at all?"Raimund tilted his head, still staring into my eyes, and I knew he must see the tears filling them, though I held them back from falling."My friend," he whispered, "do you really believe your own words, I wonder? Your pain makes me think you know that death is not the end of learning, but only the beginning.”

“You understand nothing," I told him with a weary shake of the head, but I would not try to make him understand. That there was no justification for it: the murder of another, no matter how vile. We had all been wrong and, blackest of ironies, I had known this to hold that precious and wondrous thing, life, in my hands. To hold it in my hands before I destroyed it.”

“How many of us are there?” he demanded in a less than amused tone.“Legions, surely, don’t you think it must be so?”“How can you joke about even this?” he asked, anger evident in his voice. A rarity that he expressed it, or any other emotion, for that matter. Of course, that didn’t mean the emotions weren’t there, and I’d experienced every one he’d refused to show.“Don’t knock what you haven’t tried, Michel. Trust me when I say my regular routine of self-amusement is a much better prophylactic against insanity than your grueling regimen of nightly self-flogging.”

“There is fact in every fiction and truth in every lie.”

“I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.”