Ni muer ni viu ni no guaris, Ni mal no·m sent e si l’ai gran, Quar de s’amor no suy devis, Ni no sai si ja n’aurai ni quan, Qu’en lieys es tota le mercés Que·m pot sorzer o decazer.” “Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love. I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power.

Be yourself-- Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell.

You persist in this romantic vision of what it is to be a vampire, but despite my best efforts to curb it I have a taste for blood.

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

Her bark is worse than her bite.

I wanted to know how humans came up with a view of the world that had so little magic in it. I needed to understand how they convinced themselves that magic wasn’t important.

Within days they'd formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi