Although it may not seem like it, this isn’t a story about darkness. It’s about light. Kahlil Gibran says Your joy can fill you only as deeply your sorrow has carved you. If you’ve never tasted bitterness, sweet is just another pleasant flavor on your tongue. One day I’m going to hold a lot of joy.

I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.

I'd vowed years ago to go to the grave the same way I'd been born, just a lot more wrinkly.

The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building." "But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm.

The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned nothing?

I have found there to be little distance between the unlatching of a chain and the spreading of a woman’s legs. As if they can never unbar only a single entrance. It’s a disease called hope. Women suffer from it greatly.

I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It's down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it's airtight, soundproofed and padlocked. It's where I keep the thoughts I don't know what to do with, that could get me into trouble. Eating Unseelie hammers on the inside of that lid incessantly. I try to keep kissing Barrons in that box, too, but it gets out sometimes.