Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don’t want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight.

I locked the door, for what good it would do me, and went to bed. The Browning Hi-Power was in its second home, a modified holster strapped to the headboard of my bed. The crucifix was cool metal around my neck. I was as safe as I was going to be and almost too tired to care. I took one more thing to bed with me, a stuffed toy penguin named Sigmund. I don't sleep with him often, just every once in a while after someone tries to kill me. Everyone has their weaknesses. Some people smoke. I collect stuffed penguins. If you won't tell, I won't.

I’d have much rather gotten dragged into someone else’s fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people’s emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.

It was as if the power and loneliness of the vampires' world had combined with the group oriented puppy-pile world of the shapeshifters and made something new.

Patience is a virtue, but there comes a moment when you must stop being patient and take the day by the throat and shake it. If it fights back; fine. I'd rather end up bloody at the end of the day, then unhurt with no progress made, no knowledge gained. I'd rather have a no, then nothing. I'd forgotten that about myself.

Therapy can get you only so far with exorcising your childhood nightmares; after that it's willpower, and you, and people you can trust to hold your hand along the way.

I'm very judgmental person. It's one of my faults.