“And I guess what was bothering me the most was that he had blasted away the fiction with which I had justified the weakness in myself that seemed to stay my hand whenever I was finally reaching for the life I so desired. Sure I always had my reasons, failure always does, but underlying the hesitancy was a belief I somehow couldn't shake. We are what we are, we can't transform ourselves, the die is cast and we play out our fates. I might hit upon the million-dollar case, I might stumble upon the love of my life, something hard and clean might fall into my lap and change everything, but it really wouldn't change anything. I'd still be Victor Carl, I'd still be second tier and second class, I'd still be less than I ever hoped to be.”

“What if all I'd ever known was how it had been for the past three years - me being an unwanted outsider in my own family?I might have turned out like Aphrodite, and I might still be letting my parents control me because I was hoping desperately that I would be good enough, make them proud, so that some day they would really love me.”

“More than anything in this world, I wish I had been born rich. It would have made up for everything. I'd still be ugly, sure, but I'd be rich and ugly. I'd still be weak and dim and tongue-tied with women, but I'd be rich enough for them not to care. I'd no longer be a social misfit, I'd be eccentric. And most of all, I'd no longer be what I was, I'd be something different.”

“I remember thinking to myself that if I ever reached a point in my life where I had to walk to get exercise, it might be time to clean out my ears with a gun.”

“Try as I might, I couldn't destroy my spirit. And try as I might, I couldn't change who I was. I was left with what to me seemed to be the most difficult option: loving myself just the way I am.”

“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.”