“Rosalie sat sideways in her chair, shaking from the laughter she was swallowing. I imagined myself drawing a gun from desk, taking aim, and killing her without so much as a quiver.”

“Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man.”

“Her receding laughter sounded so comforting, so alluring to my senses that I could hardly control myself from reaching out to her and telling her what I felt there and then!”

“Imagine if [Juliet] woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But [Romeo] had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.”

“You killed ’em both, babe. They’re both dead,” he babbled, shaking. “I had to,” she said, pointing the gun at the corpse lying at her feet. “That one saw me naked.”

“I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, send the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer's sky.”