Ixris

“In the dark ages a vampire could live for decades unopposed, feeding nightly on people whose only defense was to bar their windows and lock their doors and always, always, be home before sundown. When it became necessary to slay a vampire there was only one way it could be done. There were no guns and certainly no jackhammers at the time. The vampire slayers would gather up every able-bodied male in the community. The mob of them would go against the vampire with torches and spears and sticks if they had to. Very many of them would die in the first onslaught but eventually enough of them would pile on top to hold the vampire down.”
― David Wellington, 13 Bullets

“We are the centuries... We have your eoliths and your mesoliths and your neoliths. We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your chromium-plated (vital-ingredient impregnated) artifacts. We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas. We march in spite of Hell, we do – Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus vulgaris, telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve and a traveling salesman called Lucifer. We bury your dead and their reputations. We bury you. We are the centuries. Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little godhood, feel pain, give birth, struggle a little while, succumb: (Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.) Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam. Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens – and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same. (AGH! AGH! AGH! – an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the hollow of the queen's shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“....Nature imposes nothing on you that Nature doesn't prepare you to bear.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz