“He thought of her often, and he missed the companionship they'd once shared and the friendship that had been the bedrock of their marriage at its best.”

“Magnus had often thought of getting a pet, but he had never considered acquiring a sullen teenage vampire. Once Raphael was gone, he thought, he was getting a cat. And he would always throw his cat a birthday party.”

“What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar.”

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”

“Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage.”

“She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.”

“I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.”

“Like her father, he wasn't comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings. She tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemed to make a difference.”

“When he watched her sleeping, he often thought, My heart lies vulnerable outside my chest.”

“His mother had been the world to him, and although she had done her best to prepare him, he had been too young to fully understand what death meant—until she was gone, and the great, raw, gaping hole in his heart could not be filled or patched or mended. He looked for her everywhere, even after he had been shown her body—looked and looked and she could not be found.”