“I sort of wish that was what happened though, Ginny, because that would mean the girl is all right. Fourteen-year-old girls have run off before."Ginny eyed the sheriff severely. "Not fourteen-year-old girls who had grandmas like Evelyn Larkin.”

“Merle Weaver stroked the little girl's hair and thought of the two corpses in the rear of the truck.”

“Crushes are for fourteen year olds. Ellie, I would describe what's happening to you as falling.”

“In the hour before a thunderstorm, the color of the forest deepens: the pine needles take on a dense vibrant greenness they possess at no other time, the slender trunks go black, and the leaden sky above sinks lower by the minute.”

“Abstention, self-control, self-inflicted pain: these are forms of power - about the only kind you can have when you're a fourteen-year-old girl, by the way.”

“I am a commercial writer and I'm proud of that. I am writing things to be put in the bookstore next month. I think it is a mistake to try to write for the ages.”

“Stop…stop, that’s the next generation of fans… How dare you pass judgment on those 12-year-old girls who like vampires! They need to be encouraged because in six years they’ll be 18-year-old girls who like vampires and are into all sorts of goth-permissive and whatnot. Don’t Poo-poo it. There’s a plan, and it’s working.”