“True storyThis morning I jumped on my horseAnd went for a ride,And some wild outlaws chased meAnd shot me in the side.So I crawled into a wildcats caveTo find a place to hideBut some pirates found me sleeping thereAnd soon they had me tiedTo a pole and built a fireUnder me---I almost criedTill a mermaid came and cut me looseAnd begged to be my brideSo I said id come back WednesdayBut I must admit I lied.Then I ran into a jungle swampBut I forgot my guide And I stepped into some quicksandAnd no matter how hard I triedI couldn’t get out, until I metA watersnake named ClydeWho pulled me to some cannibalsWho planned to have me friedBut an eagle came and swooped me upAnd through the air we fliedBut he dropped me in a boiling lakeA thousand miles wideAnd you’ll never guess what I did then---I DIED”

“But suddenly something sharp was cutting me, my throat, my wrists, my ankles. I screamed in shock, thinking he'd brought me there to hurt me more. Then fire started burning through me, and I didn't care about anything else. I begged him to kill me. When Esme and Edward came home, I begged them to kill me too. Carlise sat with me. He held my hand and said that he was so sorry, promising that it would end. He told me everything, and sometimes I listened. He told me what he was, what I was becoming. I didn't believe him. He apologized each time I screamed. Edward wasn't happy. I remember hearing them discuss me. I stopped screaming sometimes. It did no good to scream.”

“His face was in my neck and he was breathing hard. Was he grieving me? Already? Would he miss me? Had I, in some tiny way, come to matter to this enigmatic, hard, brilliant, obsessed man? I realised he'd come to matter to me. Good or evil, right or wrong, he mattered to me...”

“I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.”

“I have some gold. I will interest you. Pity me. I beg you to help me.”

“...there are many who want it but for whom the train of compulsion doesn't seem to stop. They never get that moment, that pause that will be long enough for them to get off. Because that's all it is - for some the train is too fast, some sleep through the stops, some jump off and jump right back on because they forget immediately that this is the death train. Me? I slept, went too fast, forgot... but then finally, stopped, limping on my broken toe, the lies falling off me, making me light, making me vulnerable. Making me strong. So strong that for one moment I could halt the whole fucking train.”