Stephenie Meyer
American author.
"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."
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.
"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."
"You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed — burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames.
"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.'"
"I love you," I whispered.
"You are my life now," he answered simply.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
"I am a neutral country. I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures."
"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."
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."
"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."
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.
"Twilight, again. Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end."
I was all alone in my head — exactly what I had once wanted. It made me feel lost.