“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.”

“You like the party?
Is it in honour of anything?
My cat's birthday.
Where's your cat?
I don't know, he ran away.”

“And in his eyes he had the look of the cat who inspires a desire to caress but loves no one, who never feels he must respond to the impulses he arouses.”

“I don't want Church to be like all those dead pets! I don't want Church to ever be dead! He's my cat! He's not God's cat! Let God have His own cat! Let God have all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!”

“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.”

“And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for.
He wished that he had never met any of them.”

““Never?” he said, dismayed.
“Never,” she reiterated firmly.
He nodded, pretending to be resigned, but secretly he thought that there were always ways to get around “never.””

“Of course, Pupkin would never have thought of considering himself on an intellectual par with Mallory Tompkins. That would have been ridiculous. Mallory Tompkins had read all sorts of things and had half a mind to write a novel himself—either that or a play. All he needed, he said, was to have a chance to get away somewhere by himself and think. Every time he went away to the city Pupkin expected that he might return with the novel all finished; but though he often came back with his eyes red from thinking, the novel as yet remained incomplete.”

“He had that nameless charm, with a strong magnetism which can only be called "It", and cats – as well as women – always knew when he came into the room.”

“He wasn't that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird”