254 quotes found
"I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this."
"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end."
"I was wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace. It was a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka."
"When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen — just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun."
"It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that."
"Good luck tended to avoid me."
"Where was the feel of the institution? ... Where were the chain link fences, the metal detectors?"
"I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me."
"I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot."
"It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm."
"Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino."
"So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what?"
"Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth."
"As far as I was aware, he'd never shot the gun on the job. But he kept it ready. When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose."
"His hair was dripping wet, disheveled — even so, he looked like he'd just finished shooting a commercial for hair gel. His dazzling face was friendly, open, a slight smile on his flawless lips. But his eyes were careful."
""Ladies first, partner?" Edward asked. I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so beautiful that I could only stare at him like an idiot. "Or I could start, if you wish." The smile faded; he was obviously wondering if I was mentally competent."
"When he touched me, it stung my hand as if an electric current had passed through us."
""Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair." "I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly."
"I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen. And that was very, very stupid."
"I distracted myself [...] by thinking about Mike and Eric, and the obvious difference in how teenage boys responded to me here. [...] Perhaps it was because I was a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between. Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress. [...] I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored."
"I wasn't interesting. And he was. Interesting...and brilliant...and mysterious...and perfect...and beautiful...and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand."
"Only in a town this small would a father know when the high school dances were."
""Do you want a ride to Seattle?" "With who?" I asked, mystified. "Myself, obviously." He enunciated every syllable, as if he were talking to someone mentally handicapped."
"But can your truck make it there on one tank of gas?" [...] "I don't see how that is any of your business." Stupid, shiny Volvo owner. "The wasting of finite resources is everyone's business."
"It would be more...prudent for you not to be my friend," he explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."
"I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly."
"What if I'm not a superhero? What if I'm the bad guy?"
"People can't smell blood," he contradicted. "Well, I can — that's what makes me sick. It smells like rust... and salt."
"Don't be offended, but you seem to be one of those people who just attract accidents like a magnet. So... try not to fall into the ocean or get run over or anything, all right?"
""Bella?" I turned and he was leaning toward me, his pale, glorious face just inches from mine. My heart stopped beating. "Sleep well," he said. His breath blew in my face, stunning me."
"About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn't know how dominant that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."
"Trust me just this once — you are the opposite of ordinary."
"Of all the things about me that could frighten you, you worry about my driving."
"What kind of car is that?" I asked. "An M3." "I don't speak Car and Driver."
"It's twilight," Edward murmured. [...] "It's the safest time of day for us," he said, answering the unspoken question in my eyes. "The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way ... the end of another day, the return of the night. Darkness is so predictable, don't you think?" He smiled wistfully. "I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars."
"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 on 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."
"I'm the world's best predator, aren't I? Everything about me invites you in — my voice, my face, even my smell. As if I need any of that!"
"You are exactly my brand of heroin."
"Bella, I don't know if I could live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don't know how it's tortured me. [...] The thought of you still, white, cold ... to never see you blush scarlet again, or see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses ... it would be unendurable. [...] You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever."
"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb..." he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word. "What a stupid lamb," I sighed. "What a sick, masochistic lion."
"If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it."
"Bring on the shackles. I'm your prisoner."
"For almost ninety years I've walked among my kind, and yours ... all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren't alive yet."
"Yeah, it's an off day when I don't get somebody telling me how edible I smell."
""I love you," I whispered. "You are my life now," he answered simply."
""Vampires like baseball?" "It's the American pastime," he said with mock solemnity."
"You're wrong, you know," he said quietly. "What?" I gasped. "I can feel what you're feeling now — and you are worth it."
"It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. Now he's found you. You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?"
"Afraid of a needle. Oh, a sadistic vampire, intent on torturing her to death, sure, no problem, she runs off to meet him. An IV, on the other hand..."
"I can't always be Lois Lane," I insisted. "I want to be Superman, too."
""When someone wants to kill you, you're brave as a lion - and then when someone mentions dancing..." He shook his head."
"Do you want me to bolt the doors so you can massacre the unsuspecting townsfolk?" I whispered conspiratorially. "And where do you fit into that scheme?" He glared. "Oh, I'm with the vampires, of course."
"Twilight, again. Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end."
"Speaking about Twilight, King said that the books are "really not about vampires and werewolves. They're about how the love of a girl can turn a bad boy good." Still, the 65-year-old opted to read the latest buzzy titles out of a professional interest."
"It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. It was too green — an alien planet."
"About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn't know how potent that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."
"It's twilight," Edward murmured. [...] "It's the safest time of day for us," he said, answering the unspoken question in my eyes. "The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way … the end of another day, the return of the night. Darkness is so predictable, don't you think?" He smiled wistfully. "I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars."
"For almost ninety years I've walked among my kind, and yours … all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren't alive yet."
"Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm — into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires."
"You try very hard to make up for something that was never your fault. [...] You didn't choose this kind of life, and yet you have to work so hard to be good." "I don't know that I'm making up for anything," he disagreed lightly. "Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given."
"Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight — a lunar eclipse, a new moon. A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold."
"I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn't lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface."
"Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me."
"I was like a lost moon — my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation — that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity."
"One thing I truly knew — knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest — was how love gave someone the power to break you. I had been broken beyond repair."
"Once you cared about a person, it was impossible to be logical about them anymore."
"I'd never seen anything more beautiful — even as I ran, gasping and screaming, I could appreciate that. And the last seven months meant nothing. And [Edward's] words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived."
"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars — points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."
"I am a neutral country. I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures."
"If there were any way for me to become human for you — no matter what the price was, I would pay it."
"I hate you, Jacob Black." "That's good. Hate is a passionate emotion." "I'll give you passionate," I muttered under my breath. "Murder, the ultimate crime of passion."
"Edward rode in the backseat of my father's police car, behind the fiberglass divider, with an amused expression — probably due to my father's amused expression, and the grin that widened every time Charlie stole a glance at Edward in his rearview mirror."
"They stood out from the rest of the crowd, their beauty and grace otherworldly. I wondered how I'd ever fallen for their human farce. A couple of angels, standing there with wings intact, would be less conspicuous."
"I wondered if I was a monster. Not the kind that [Edward] thought he was, but the real kind. The kind that hurt people. The kind that had no limits when it came to what they wanted."
"You know, Jacob, if it weren't for the fact that we're natural enemies and that you're also trying to steal away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you." "Maybe...if you weren't a disgusting vampire who was planning to suck out the life of the girl I love...well, no, not even then."
"[W]hen I left you, Bella, I left you bleeding. Jacob was the one to stitch you back up again. That was bound to leave its mark — on both of you. I'm not sure those kinds of stitches dissolve on their own."
"I'm exactly right for you, Bella. It would have been effortless for us — comfortable, easy as breathing. I was the natural path your life would have taken. [...] If the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic..."
"He's like a drug for you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun." The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful half-smile. "I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me." He sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."
""Don't be afraid," I muttered. "We belong together." I was abruptly overwhelmed by the truth of my own words. This moment was so perfect, so right, there was no way to doubt it."
"Do you want me to sing to you? I'll sing all night if it will keep the bad dreams away."
"I told you—," I started to say. "Did you know that I told you so has a brother, Jacob?" she asked, cutting me off. "His name is Shut the hell up."
"They are vampires, I guess, Seth allowed after a minute, compensating for Leah's reaction. I mean, it makes sense. And if [drinking blood] helps Bella, it's a good thing, right? Both Leah and I stared at him. [...] Mom dropped him a lot when he was a baby, Leah told me. On his head, apparently."
"Have you heard this one, Psycho? How do a blonde's brain cells die? [... A] blonde's brain cells die alone."
"I could see that now — how the universe swirled around this one point. I'd never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain. The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood. It was the baby girl in the blonde vampire's arms that held me here now. Renesmee."
"You stupid mutt! How could you? My baby! [Jacob] backed out the front door now as I stalked him, half-running backward down the stairs. "It wasn't my idea, Bella!" "I've held her all of one time, and already you think you have some moronic wolfy claim to her? She's mine. [...] How dare you imprint on my baby? Have you lost your mind?"
"I'll play you for it," Alice suggested. "Rock, paper, scissors." [...] "Why don't you just tell me who wins?" Edward said wryly. Alice beamed. "I do. Excellent."
"Who rules you, nomads? Do you answer to someone's will besides your own? Are you free to choose your own path, or will the Volturi decide how you will live? "I came to witness. I stay to fight. The Volturi care nothing for the death of a child. They seek the death of our free will."
"And then [Edward and I] continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever."
"It was a miracle — more than a miracle — when I found you, Melanie. Right now, if I was given the choice between having the world back and having you, I wouldn't be able to give you up. Not to save five billion lives."
"You never know how much time you'll have."
"This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds — the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions... the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached."
"And it wasn't just ripping, but twisting and pulling in different directions. Because Melanie's heart broke, too, and it was a separate sensation, as if we'd grown another organ to compensate for our twin awarenesses. A double heart for a double mind. Twice the pain."
"I was all alone in my head — exactly what I had once wanted. It made me feel lost."
"I am female," I complained. "That 'it' business is really getting on my nerves." [...] "By whose definition?" "How about by yours? In my species, I am the one that bears young. Is that not female enough for you?"
"That's just great," someone said under his breath. "We've got a bloody queen mother alien living with us. She could blow into a million new buggers at any moment."
"You stupid jackass," Ian said. "Who's got the crush on a worm, bro? You gonna call me stupid?"
"It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.""
"What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules — it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared. Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?"
""You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed — burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames."
"I held you in my hand, Wanderer. And you were so beautiful."
""It's a strange world," I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul. "The strangest," he agreed."
"Honestly though, why do you read [Wuthering Heights] over and over?" [...] "I think it's something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart — not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death, in the end..."
"If we could bottle your luck, we'd have a weapon of mass destruction on our hands."
"Do you really have any idea how important you are to me? Any concept at all of how much I love you?" [...] "I know how much I love you," I answered. "You compare one small tree to the entire forest."
"Yeah, I'll stop by your crypt after school."
"I don't have any leeches on my speed dial."
"I'm really glad Edward didn't kill you. Everything's so much more fun with you around."
"Look after my heart — I've left it with you."
"Did you seriously just stamp your foot? I thought girls only did that on TV."
"You don't seem to grasp how dangerous a young werewolf can be. [...] You shouldn't be so reckless." My voice turned acidic. "Yes, because a vampire slumber party is the pinnacle of safety conscious behavior."
"You are in trouble," I said slowly, emphasizing each word. "Enormous trouble. Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home."
"Would you like to hear my story, Bella? It doesn't have a happy ending — but which of ours does? If we had happy endings, we'd all be under gravestones now."
"I don't want Edward that way, Bella. I never did — I love him as a brother, but he's irritated me from the first moment I heard him speak."
"This is nice," I commented when he pulled the warm sodas from the grocery bag. "I've missed this place." He smiled, looking around at the plastic sheds bolted together over our heads. "Yeah, I can understand that. All the splendor of the Taj Mahal, without the inconvenience and expense of traveling to India."
"You'd be better off dead. I'd rather you were."
"You can hold me hostage any time you want."
"You're quite adorable when you're jealous. It's surprisingly enjoyable."
"Sleep my Bella, dream happy dreams, you are the only one who will ever touch my heart. It will always be yours. Sleep my only love."
"Does my being half-naked bother you?"
"You look...sexy." I laughed out loud. "Right." "Very sexy, really."
"Hanging out with no one but extremely dexterous people all the time was going to give me a complex."
""I have foreseen...," Alice began in an ominous tone."
"I'm not that girl, Edward. The one who gets married right out of high school like some small-town hick who got knocked up by her boyfriend! Do you know what people would think? Do you realize what century this is? People don't just get married at eighteen! Not smart people, not responsible, mature people! I wasn't going to be that girl! That's not who I am...."
"Bella should understand this, too. She's one of us now."
"And you ducked your head, like a good Southern gentleman, and said, 'I’m sorry, ma'am.'" [...] "For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope."
"Emmett and I were away hunting. Jasper shows up, covered in battle scars, towing this little freak" — he nudged Alice playfully — "who greets [the whole family] by name, knows everything about them, and wants to know which room she can move into."
"If I didn't watch myself, I might end up writing my History essay on the vampire wars of the South."
"I tried to imagine telling my parents that I was getting married this summer. Telling Angela and Ben. I couldn't. I couldn't think of the words to say. It would be easier to tell them I was becoming a vampire."
"I can't wait to see what Edward does to you! I hope he snaps your neck, you pushy, obnoxious, moronic DOG!"
""Why did she hit you?" "Because I kissed her," Jacob said, unashamed. "Good for you, kid," Charlie congratulated him."
"But if you ever bring her back damaged again — and I don't care whose fault it is; I don't care if she merely trips, or if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head — if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition that I left her in, you will be running with three legs. Do you understand that, mongrel?"
"I'll be fighting for her, too. You should know that. I'm not taking anything for granted, and I'll be fighting twice as hard as you will."
"She is mine." Edward's low voice was suddenly dark, not as composed as before. "I didn't say I would fight fair."
"Emmett grinned. "Fall down again, Bella?" I glared at him fiercely. "No, Emmett. I punched a werewolf in the face." Emmett blinked, and then burst into a roar of laughter."
"I feel so useless. So...normal." She cringed in horror of the word. "I can't imagine how awful that must feel. Being normal? Ugh."
"I saw Emmett grin at Mike over the food table, the red lights gleaming off his teeth, and watched Mike take an automatic step back."
"The imprinting compulsion is one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed in my life, and I've seen some strange things. [...] It reminds me of A Midsummer Night's Dream with all the chaos caused by the fairies' love spells...like magic." He smiled. "It's very nearly as strong as the way I feel about you."
"I couldn't believe how awkward and idiotic I felt. I was too innocent — which was, of course, central to the discussion. I didn't have the faintest idea how to be seductive. I would just have to settle for flushed and self-conscious."
""Bella," he murmured, his voice warm and velvet. "Would you please stop trying to take your clothes off?" "Do you want to do that part?" I asked, confused."
"You make me feel like a villain in a melodrama — twirling my mustache while I try to steal some poor girl's virtue."
"You can't make me go somewhere you won't be," I vowed. "That's my definition of hell. Anyways, I have an easy solution to all this: let's never die, all right?"
"Oh no," I gasped as he slid down onto one knee. "Be nice," he muttered. [...] "Isabella Swan?" He looked up at me through his impossibly long lashes, his golden eyes soft but, somehow, still scorching. "I promise to love you forever — every single day of forever. Will you marry me?"
"The urge to fight must be a defining characteristic of the Y chromosome. They were all the same."
"Edward is the only person I've ever kissed." "Besides me." "But I don't count that as a kiss, Jacob. I think of it more as an assault."
"Sometimes I think you like me better as a wolf." "Sometimes I do. It probably has something to do with the way you can't talk." He pursed his broad lips thoughtfully. "No, I don't think that's it. I think it's easier for you to be near me when I'm not human, because you don't have to pretend that you're not attracted to me."[...] "No. I'm pretty sure it's because you can't talk."
"Odd as this might sound, I suppose I'm glad you're here, Jacob." "You mean 'as much as I'd love to kill you, I'm glad [Bella's] warm', right?" "It's an uncomfortable truce, isn't it?"
""And when does this little truce end?" Jacob asked. "First light? Or do we wait until after the fight?" There was a pause as they both considered. "First light," they both whispered, and then laughed quietly."
"I was like Cathy, like Wuthering Heights, only my options were so much better than hers, neither one evil, neither one weak. And here I sat, crying about it, not doing anything productive to make it right. Just like Cathy."
"Seth jumped to his feet again suddenly, the hackles on the back of his neck standing up stiffly. I looked around, but saw nothing. If Seth didn't cut it out, I was going to throw a pinecone at him."
"When I left you, Bella, I left you bleeding. Jacob was the one to stitch you back up again. That was bound to leave its mark — on both of you. I'm not sure those kinds of stitches dissolve on their own."
"I can be noble, Bella. I'm not going to make you choose between us. Just be happy, and you can have whatever part of me you want, or none at all, if that's better. Don't let any debt you feel you owe me influence your decision."
"What happened to fighting back? Don't start with the noble self-sacrifice now! Fight!"
"You are bizarrely moral for a vampire."
"[Victoria] wheeled and flew toward the refuge of the forest like an arrow from a bow. But Edward was faster — a bullet from a gun."
"Sure, Bella, don't worry. He was himself enough to tease me." "Tease you?" I echoed in shock. "Yeah — in between insulting somebody's mother and taking the Lord's name in vain, he said, 'Bet you're glad she loves Cullen instead of me today, huh, Charlie?'"
"He's like a drug for you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun."
"The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."
"It had not been Edward and Jacob that I'd been trying to force together, it was the two parts of myself, Edward's Bella and Jacob's Bella. But they could not exist together, and I never should have tried."
""Bella...are you sure? Did you make the right choice? I've never seen you in so much pain —" His voice broke on the last word. But I had known worse pain."
"I read the lines quietly, mostly to myself. "'If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.'" I nodded, again to myself. "I know exactly what she means. And I know who I can't live without.""
""Tell me why not, Bella," he demanded. "This had better not be about me." Everything in my world was about him. What a silly thing to expect."
"[Edward] once again slid my ring into place on the third finger of my left hand. Where it would stay — conceivably for the rest of eternity."
"I don't even like Bella Swan. And you've got me grieving over this leech-lover like I'm in love with her, too. Can you see where that might be a little confusing? I dreamed about kissing her last night! What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"
"I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough."
"But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today."
"As the clock began to toll out the hour, vibrating under the soles of my sluggish feet, I knew I was too late — and I was glad something bloodthirsty waited in the wings. For in failing at this, I forfeited any desire to live."
"Eighteen isn't very old," Alice said. "Don't women usually wait till they're twenty-nine to get upset over birthdays?"
"Attention is never a good thing, as any other accident-prone klutz would agree. No one wants a spotlight when they're likely to fall on their face."
"You know, I've never had much patience with Romeo," he commented as the movie started. [...] "Well, first of all, he's in love with this Rosaline—don't you think it makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his own happiness any more thoroughly?"
"Charlie would be forever grateful to [Alice] for saving him from the horror of an almost-adult daughter who needed help showering."
"You haven't changed at all," Emmett said with mock disappointment. "I expected a perceptible difference, but here you are, red-faced just like always."
"I think, in most other ways, that I've done the best I could with what I had to work with. But was it right to doom the others to this life? I can't decide."
"Mike Newton would be a hell of a lot healthier for you to be with," he growled. [...] "I'd rather die than be with anyone but you."
"No! This is about my soul, isn't it? [...] Carlisle told me about that, and I don't care Edward. I don't care! You can have my soul. I don't want it without you — it's yours already!"
"Bella, I don't want you to come with me." [...] "You... don't... want me?" I tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order. "No."
"It will be as if I'd never existed."
"Don't worry. You're human — your memory is no more than a sieve. Time heals all wounds for your kind."
"With shaky legs, ignoring the fact that my action was useless, I followed [Edward] into the forest. The evidence of his path had disappeared instantly. There were no footprints, the leaves were still again, but I walked forward without thinking. I could not do anything else. I had to keep moving. If I stopped looking for him, it was over. Love, life, meaning... over."
""Are you hurt, Bella?" It took me a minute to think that through. I was confused by the memory of Sam Uley's similar question in the woods. Only Sam had asked something else: Have you been hurt? he'd said. The difference seemed significant somehow."
"My eyes did not stray toward the black garbage bag that held my present from that last birthday, did not see the shape of the stereo where it strained against the black plastic; I didn't think of the bloody mess my nails had been when I'd finished clawing it out of the dashboard."
"I saw no reason for fear. I couldn't imagine anything in the world that there was left to be afraid of, not physically at least. One of the few advantages of losing everything."
"Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk."
"Only a teenage boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn't see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods."
"Jacob was simply a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them."
"Unattainable and impossible, uncaring and distracted... but he was out there, somewhere. I had to believe that."
"He patted my head. "You're like a little doll," he teased. "A porcelain doll.""
"I tried to tell myself that the fear was pointless. I'd already lived through the worst thing possible. In comparison with that, why should anything frighten me now? I should be able to look death in the face and laugh."
"Did you know, you're sort of beautiful?" [...] Jacob just rolled his eyes. "You hit your head pretty hard, didn't you?"
"I'd had the most amazing hallucination today. My velvet-voiced delusion had yelled at me for almost five minutes before I'd hit the brake too abruptly and launched myself into the tree."
"Maybe we'll see the super bear," Jacob joked. [...] Billy just laughed at his son. "Maybe you should take a jar of honey, just in case."
"So are you going to be my Valentine?" [...] "What exactly does that entail?" I hedged. "The usual — slave for life, that kind of thing."
"One thing I truly knew — knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest — was how love gave someone the power to break you. I'd been broken beyond repair."
"It was ridiculous that I should be so elated because a vampire knew my name."
"I'd thought that Jake had been healing the hole in me — or at least plugging it up, keeping it from hurting me so much. I'd been wrong. He'd just been carving out his own hole, so that I was now riddled through like Swiss cheese. I wondered why I didn't crumble into pieces."
"I protected the Cullens' secret out of love; unrequited, but true."
"What kind of a place was this? Could a world really exist where ancient legends went wandering around the borders of tiny, insignificant towns, facing down mythical monsters? Did this mean every impossible fairy tale was grounded somewhere in absolute truth? Was there anything sane or normal at all, or was everything just magic and ghost stories?"
"I thought of Carlisle, the centuries upon centuries that he had struggled to teach himself to ignore blood, so that he could save lives and be a doctor. Nothing could be harder than that."
"I bet she's tougher than that. She runs with vampires."
"So, you're the vampire girl." I stiffened. "Yes. Are you the wolf girl?"
"Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made."
"I thought briefly of the clichés, about how you were suppose to see your life flash before your eyes. I was so much luckier. Who wanted to see a rerun, anyway? I saw him, and I had no will to fight."
"Happiness. It made the whole dying thing pretty bearable."
"Goodbye, I love you, was my last thought."
""Juliet gets dumped and ends up with Paris" would have never been a hit."
"Leave it to you, Bella. Anyone else would have been better off when the vampires left town. But you have to start hanging out with the first monsters you can find."
""It's not normal, Alice, and it...it frightens me. Not normal at all. Not like someone...left her, but like someone died." His voice cracked. It was like someone had died — like I had died. Because it had been more than just losing the truest of true loves, as if that were not enough to kill anyone. It was also losing a whole future, a whole family — the whole life that I'd chosen..."
"Keeping his eyes on mine, Jacob began to bend his face toward me. And I was still absolutely undecided."
"You don't get a lot of suicidal vampires."
"Maybe, if I were very, very, very lucky, I would somehow be able to save Edward. But I wasn't so stupid as to think that saving him would mean that I could stay with him. I was no different, no more special than I'd been before. There would be no new reason for him to want me now. Seeing him and losing him again...I fought back against the pain. This was the price I had to pay to save his life. I would pay it."
"You are so bizarre, even for a human."
"Bella?" "Yes?" She eyed me speculatively. "How strongly are you opposed to grand theft auto?"
""I'm going to get you as close as possible, and then you're going to run in the direction I point you. [...] Try not to trip," she added. "We don't have time for a concussion today." I groaned. That would be just like me — ruin everything, destroy the world, in a moment of klutziness."
"I'd never seen anything more beautiful — even as I ran, gasping and screaming, I could appreciate that. And the last seven months meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived."
"It was very strange, for I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect — not healed, but as if there had been no wound in the first place."
""Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty," he murmured, and I recognized the line spoken by Romeo in the tomb."
"You smell just exactly the same as always. [...] So maybe this is hell. I don't care. I'll take it."
"At least I could be with him again before I died. That was better than a long life."
"I love a happy ending." Aro sighed. "They are so rare."
"Ah, how I miss my friend Carlisle! You remind me of him — only he was not so angry."
""I think she's having hysterics. Maybe you should slap her," Alice suggested."
"It was heaven — right smack in the middle of hell."
"[Edward] continued to kiss my hair, my forehead, my wrists...but never my lips, and that was good. After all, how many ways can one heart be mangled and still be expected to keep beating? I'd lived through a lot that should have finished me in the last few days, but it didn't make me feel strong. Instead, I felt horribly fragile, like one word could shatter me."
"It doesn't count until she's conscious, Rose."
"The odds...," he muttered then, distracted. His voice was so low I wasn't sure I heard it right. "The odds are always stacked against us. Mistake after mistake. I'll never criticize Romeo again."
"I thought I'd explained it clearly before. Bella, I can't live in a world where you don't exist."
"But how could you believe me? After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me? [...] I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn't want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept — as if there were any way that I could exist without needing you!"
"The worst the Volturi can do is kill me. [...] You can leave me," I explained. "The Volturi, Victoria...they're nothing compared to that."
"Shh," I interrupted him. "Hold on a second. I think I'm having an epiphany here. [...] You love me," I marveled. [...] "Truly, I do."
"What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?"
"Marry me first." I stared at him, waiting... "Okay. What's the punch line?" He sighed. "You're wounding my ego, Bella. I just proposed to you, and you think it's a joke."
"Abruptly, I remembered what had happened to Paris when Romeo came back. The stage directions were simple: They fight. Paris falls."
""I'm a quick learner, Jacob Black, and I don't make the same mistake twice. I'm here until she orders me away." [...] "Never," I whispered, still locked in Edward's eyes."