“The dank smell of death in that alleyway haunted her senses, her memories. She kept thinking this was the end—this was what death felt like, what death looked like. Death was a …‘Vampire,’ she whispered.”

“She fancied herself superiour to her surroundings: surely there were higher things to live for. Yet the ugliness of this room was but a part of what she felt to be the dreariness of all life outside of books.”

“You're beautiful this morning," Archer said, stopping before her, kissing her nose. "You're impossibly sweet in my shirt."That might be but she felt like death. She would gladly make the trade; how blissful it would be to feel impossibly sweet and look like death.”

“I know what death smells like. Death smells like gasoline, singed hair and fingernails.It smells like cooking meat. My meat.”

“Eyes like streams of melting snow, cold with the things she does not know. Heaven above and Hell beneath, liquid flames to hide her grief. Death, death, death with no release. Death, death, death with no release.”

“I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.”

“You're like a doll I had when I was a kid. She was all stiched together and her head kept falling off, but I loved that doll. That's what you look like. Like somebody just loved you to death.”