The smile broke across his face the way the sunrise set the clouds on fire.

Alice: "No one will dare to call you plain when I'm through with you." Bella: "Only because they're afraid you'll suck their blood.

I think there are many feminists who would say that I am not a feminist. I love women, I have a lot of girlfriends, I admire them, they make so much more sense to me than men, and I feel like the world is a better place when women are in charge. So that kind of by default makes me a feminist. I love working in a female world.

When I told you I didn't want you it was the blackest kind of blasphemy

I tried to remember how to exhale. I had to look away before it came back to me.

Our relationship couldn't continue to balance, as it did, on the point of a knife. We would fall off one edge or the other, depending entirely upon his decision, or his instincts. My decision was made, made before I'd ever consciously chosen, and I was committed to seeing it through. Because there was nothing more terrifying to me, more excruciating, than the thought of turning away from him. It was an impossibility.

For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.