“I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references.”

“The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.”

“So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--t...”

“I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.”

“Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.Can I trust him?What do I have to lose?”

“What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“Did you just mentally pistol whip that guy, with his own gun? Nice, Amber. I would have just killed him.”

“Getting up from the bed, Dominick approaches me at a slow predatory pace. Once again, I cannot move my feet.”

“Goddamn it, do it yourself. Youre five hundred years old and you cant use a telephone? Read the directions. What are you, an immortal idiot?”