“We'd all mourn for a while, but at the end of the day we were a tough lot, and we'd survive.”

“A weathered black and silver Dodge pickup towing a small motorboat pulled up behind us, and Alex circled back to greet the driver. I couldn’t see who sat behind the crusted and dirty windshield, bu...”

“I grabbed a shard of glass and spun around, brandishing it in front of me. It was a pretty, stippled blue piece, nice and sharp.“Hold on, tiger. I give up.”A bear of a man stood in front of me, han...”

“I’d pulled my unruly blond hair out of its usual ponytail for the occasion, loaded on some makeup to play up my teal eyes, and poured myself into a little black skirt, short enough to show off my l...”

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

“It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. ...”

“Magic or nature, they were much the same thing to Magnus.”

“I should like to understand more about the signs on the shirt you wore earlier. What was it: Eat the tail and suck the head?”

“Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose--think of Faulkner's Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don't hate the South I don't I don't. She wondered how they'd have worked it out in Cambridge when...”

“My first thought was that a tornado had somehow picked me up and carried me off, like in the Wizard of Oz. No old witches pedaled by, and I didn't see any flying farm animals or chicken coops, and ...”

“I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when...”

“They say there are three kinds of people in the world: those who listen to stories, those who tell them, and those who make them.”

“Well, if pirates are bad,And vampires are worse,Then I pray that as long as I beThat though I sing of VampiratesI never one shall see.Yea, if pirates are dangerAnd vampires are death,I'll extend my...”