“It felt odd to have interrupted the life of someone she knew nothing about, to kill someone she had only just met, as though killing needed intimacy, deep knowledge of the other, to make it all right.”

“He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.”

“Say you are at the brink of killing yourself and someone tries to talk you out of it. You’ve already thought about it and your life is not worth living. Someone else comes along and tries to convince you not to kill yourself. Is there someone out there that can convince you not to kill yourself? What can they possibly say to convince you that your life, the one you have firsthand knowledge of, is worth living? There is that one answer. No one! There is that other answer. Nothing!”

“...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.”

“She had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.”

“Ella knew she should be horrified. Zane had killed someone for just touching her. But, and she might burn in hell for thinking this, she thought it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. In a perverted way, she also found it romantic. She finally had someone who wanted to protect her. My very own vampire in dark armor.”