Laurell Kaye Hamilton is an American erotic horror and science fiction/fantasy writer. Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. In 2000, she branched out and started the new Merry Gentry series about a fairy princess turned private investigator. Her writing is characterized by vivid prose, strong first-character viewpoint, and explicit sex and violence.

Guilty Pleasures (1993)

• I hate to waste a really good threat.

• I know who and what I am. I am The Executioner, and I don't date Vampires. I kill them.
  • Final line

• You will never lose your nerve. Your life, probably, but never your nerve."
  • Edward on Anita

• "I won't die, eaten alive," he said. He put a fresh clip in his gun. "I'll do you first if you want, or you can do it yourself."

"Save your bullets, Edward." I lifted a can of gasoline in one hand.

"What are you planning?" he asked.

"I'm going to set the shed on fire." I splashed gasoline on the door. The smell was sharp and tugged at the back of my throat.

"With us inside?" he asked.

“Yes.”

"I'd rather shoot myself, if it's all the same to you."

• • Edward and Anita

The Laughing Corpse

• I could almost smell her fear... Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys.
  • Anita

• My eyes were running because there were pieces of zombie all over my toys, Jesus.
  • Anita after a zombie attack

• People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when the knowledge is so damn frightening.
  • Anita

• Pretend hard enough and maybe it will go away.
  • Anita

Narcissus In Chains (2001)

• I stepped out of the car on the rat king's arm, like a trophy wife--exept for the wrist sheaths and the two folding knives hidden in my clothing. Somehow I think trophy wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But, Hey, I haven't met a trophy wife, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inces of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn't matter has been seeing too many small knives.
  • Anita's musings on knives; unidentified edition, pp. 304-305

• We hate most in others what we dislike in ourselves.
  • Anita's musings on Richard, the reluctant werewolf; unidentified edition/page

Incubus Dreams (2004)

• Giving up at something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn't giving up at all, it's growing up.
  • Psychic mentor Marianne, to Anita; p. 61

• He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body not so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we all have to press our nakedness against someone else's.
  • Anita Blake's observation about vampire servant Damian; p. 81

• You ask yourself "What is love? Am I in love?", when what you should be asking is, "What is not love?", ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?
  • Vampire Jean-Claude, to Anita; p. 176

• No, really, Ronnie, it's good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged.
  • Anita, to Ronnie, referring to her were-rat boyfriend Louie; p. 197

• Anita: My life works for me right now, but it wouldn't work for a child.
  Ronnie: Why, because you don't have a husband?
  Anita: No, because people try to kill me on a semiregular basis.
  • p. 198

• A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.
  • Vampire Requiem, to Anita; p. 311

• There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.
  • Musings of Anita Blake; pp. 383-384

• Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil.
  • Musings of Anita Blake; p. 518

• There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality.
  • Musings of Anita Blake; p. 627

• I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid...
  • Unidentified edition/page

Well I wasn't going to die. You didn't die of a broken heart, it just felt like you were going to. I knew from personal experience that if you just kept moving, acting as if you weren't bleeding inside you didn't die, and eventually you stopped wanting to.

• • Unidentified page

Danse Macabre (2006)

• [Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant.]
  Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet.
  Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one.
  Ronnie: You're pro-choice.
  Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life.
  Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both.
  Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb.
  • Chapter 1, pp. 4-5

• Samuel smiled at me. "Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren't they?"
  I nodded, and frowned. "They're important to everybody."
  He laughed. "Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions."
  • Chapter 17, p. 151

• "The idea of the feudal system is that the people on the top take care of the needs of those on the bottom, but I have seldom seen it work that way," Wicked said.
  "Yeah," I said, "it's like trickle-down economics; it only works if the people at the top are really good, decent people. The system is only as good as the people in power."
  • Chapter 26, p. 250

The Harlequin (2007)

• Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people, that's easy. […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God?
  • Anita Blake to Richard Zeeman; chapter 44, pp. 391-392

A Stroke of Midnight (2005)

• That feeling of terrible emptiness when I touched him was like going into a house that you thought would be full of people you loved, only to find it empty, and even the furniture taken. You walk from room to room, hearing your footsteps echo on the naked floors. Your voice bounces back from the empty walls, where the lines of beloved photos still show like the line around a body at a crime scene. He was gone.
  • memories of Princess Meredith about encountering the body of her father, Essus; p. 40

• You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.
  • musings of Princess Meredith; p. 41

• Love is too precious to be ashamed of.
  • Galen; p. 105

• A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful.
  • Ivi; p. 147

• After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.
  • Musings of Princess Meredith about her aunt, Queen Andais; p. 357