He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.

She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.

Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.

Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: “I will not be nothing.”