...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily," he said. "You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval." I stared at him. "You made a *joke*." "I have heard this kind of thing may happen.

One keeps searching for ease, she did not say, and not finding it, till the memories of no-pain seem only like daydreams.

My sheets had never been so clean as they had in the past few months. I hardly got them on again before something else happened and I was feverishly ripping them off and stuffing them in the wash with double amounts of soap and all the "extra" buttons pushed: extra wash, extra rinse, extra water, extra spin, extra protection against things that go bump in the night.

Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.

Betrayal would be a different sort of sick.

I get a little cranky with the whole business about kids not having attention spans. This reminds me of the usual business of thinking that the next generation is hopeless. Every generation has said that about every younger generation.