Happiness makes people beautiful.

And as we kissed, really kissed, something inside me was smashed, like a splitting atom, erupting with all the force of a shattering nucleus. And yet I was strangely at peace, too. It was like I’d found my place in the universe, in the chaos, and Lucius and I could go along locked together throughout time without end, like pi, existing infinitely, irrationally, spinning through time.

It sounded like elevator music for the tormented souls on their way to hell.

Lucius smiled. “I’ll tell my tailor his work is ‘rockin’ and ‘supercool.’ I’m sure he’ll be gratified to learn that he can compete with the Gap.

You will not address me as if I’m not even here – unless you want to join Lucius in the dungeons. And then we’ll see how long you will last without blood, because you are two hundred years older and nowhere strong as my husband.

What is love if not a form of alchemy?

I don’t know how to dress girls, I know how to dress women.

You are a vampire princess. Your destiny is not entirely your own.

American women. Why do you all want to be nearly invisible? Why not have a physical presence in the world? Women should have curves, not angles. Not points.

I almost wish that I could replace their hideous flok dolls, as a gesture of my gratitude. Could you, perhaps, have one of the local women fashion a crude poppet out of, say, a wooden spool and some scraps of wool? Nothing fancy. Aesthetic standars for this particular collection were not high, believe me. “Ugly” and “ill-crafted” seem to be part of the key criteria.