Without death,' he answered, 'life is meaningless. It is a story that can never be told. A song that can never be sung. For how would one finish it?

All I ask is that my final months be happy ones, and that I be permitted a husband who will see to my proper Christian beheading and burial.


…Abe didn’t say a word. He made straight for his journal and wrote down a single sentence. One that would radically alter the course of his life, and bring a fledgeling nation to the brink of collapse.
I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America.

Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous.

‎And when this intoxication has worn away... when every desire is fulfilled and every language learned- when there are no more distant cities to explore; no classics to be studied; not another coin to be stuffed in to one's coffers- what then? One can have all the comforts of the world, but what use are they if there is no comfort in them?

There are but two types of men who desire war: those who haven’t the slightest intention of fighting it themselves, and those who haven’t the slightest idea what it is. … Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.

On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he speaks. And there is something of dignity in the way his trousers cling to those most English parts of him.