They wore their strange beauty like war paint.

We labor under so many illusions about ourselves until we're stripped bare. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. You, distilled. You, boiled down like a sauce. But it's you as you always were, deep down inside.

I finally believed it was actually a beautiful thing to be unique and to be different.

She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered.

Crippled things are always more beautiful. It's the flaw that brings out beauty.

She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.