“As you wish, of course." Lucius lowered the volume on an old record player, which spun a warped vinyl disk that wailed unfamiliar music, scratchy and whiny, like cats fighting. Or a coffin with rus...”

“Stupid Romanian bloodsucker. He was lucky I hadn't bestowed another exalted scar on his imperial body.”

“As you know, I have always been curious about our immortality... how it feels to live on and on through time....I need speculate no longer, I have sampled eternity in Miss Campbell's fifth period "...”

“Why do humans always look at these things from the wrong perspective? Predators deserve our sympathy, too.”

“You're a wrestler, right, Jake?" Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening's entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we'd throw a few burgers on t...”

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

“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.”

“I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.”

“Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.”

“I was the kind of reader in smudged pink harlequin glasses sitting on the cool, dusty floor of the Arrandale public library, standing at the edge of the playground, having broken a tooth in dodge b...”