“Who can ever know what turns the spark into flame? Vidanric's initial interest in me might well have been kindled by the fact that he saw my actions as courageous, but the subsequent discovery of passion, and the companionship of the mind that would sutain it, seemed as full of mystery as it was of felicity. As for me, I really believe that the spark had been there all along, but I had been too ignorant--and too afraid--to recognize it.”

“i will always remember what my life might have been like if i had married a man who loved me with undying passion. perhaps i might not have been so vunerabel to the attension of a rake. ”

“I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.”

“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.”

“For me, Mama's cabinet had been full of mysteries and secrets to be puzzled out, like an adventure. For them it had been full of memories. And I had broken all of them.”

“I closed my eyes. I used to think I was protecting the world, too. But it wasn't that simple. Nothing was. Who were we to decide that anyone or anything didn't deserve the spark of life they had been given?”