“His character is like an emerald—multifaceted and enhanced by inclusions.”

“Affronts to her reputation pierced her to the heart, though I couldn’t understand why, since she had very little character left to defend.”

“Maybe I had been making a greater monster of him than he really was, or maybe I was still under his influence, for I was certain that he wanted me to believe he was no more than a harmless man who happened to use vampirism to get what he desired. Some remnant of his mesmerism was still upon me. I had never been able to shake the feeling that he was tucked away in a corner of my mind, that he could read my thoughts, know what I was thinking. He had done something to me, but what that was, I had never been able to discover. All I knew was that the feeling had been with me since the morning I woke up and found myself in Venice.”

“Do you often wonder,” she continued, desperately hoping her questions would win Vasily over, “what might have been had his gaze fallen upon some other miserable wretch? Yes, you would have been destitute, starving in the streets, scraping for your next meal…but even beggars are free.”

“If I were pressed, I would admit that she was beautiful, in a dead bride sort of way.”

“With Stefan, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, becomes increasingly blurred.”

“I’d go to hell and back and cut off the devil’s head myself to save you.”