“What makes people is not bone structure and eye color, but the force of their personalities. the years of experience painted on their faces.”

“That disapproving look was back in her eyes. Her teacher face. The one that could make you squirm from ten paces, even if you were innocent. And I hadn't been innocent for years.”

“I sounded like Horton the Elephant. "A person is a person no matter how small." What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire?”

“Make them fear you. Machiavelli said it nearly six hundred years ago, but it's still true. Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job.”

“I just love dealing with people whose idea of sometimes is every thousand years,” I said.”

“A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful.”

“Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.”