Eclipse (Twilight, #3)

by Stephenie Meyer

Despite the natural aversion most humans felt toward the Cullens, Angela sat dutifully beside Alice every day at lunch. After a few weeks, Angela even looked comfortable there. It was difficult not to be charmed by the Cullens—once one gave them the chance to be charming.

“I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality.” “I think that may be the point,” I disagreed. “Their love is their only redeeming quality.”

Jacob could never quite manage the perfect serenity Sam always exuded.

“You could have called us,” Edward said in a steel-hard voice. “Sorry,” Jacob answered, his face twisting into a sneer. “I don’t have any leeches on my speed dial.” “You could have reached me at Bella’s house, of course.”

“Haven’t you noticed yet, Bella, that Edward is just the teeniest bit prone to overreaction?”

I’ll be back so soon you won’t have time to miss me. Look after my heart—I‘ve left it with you.

My truck was positively wheezing by the time it grated to a stop in front of the familiar faded red house.

Fresh out the slammer i know who my first call will be to

was on my feet again, my hands balled up into fists, my whole frame shaking. “You. Are. Not. Aging,” I growled through my teeth. Jacob tugged my arm gently, trying to make me sit. “None of us are. What’s wrong with you?” “Am I the only one who has to get old? I get older every stinking day!” I nearly shrieked, throwing my hands in the air. Some little part of me recognized that I was throwing a Charlie-esque fit, but that rational part was greatly overshadowed by the irrational part. “Damn it! What kind of world is this? Where’s the justice?” “Take it easy, Bella.” “Shut up, Jacob. Just shut up! This is so unfair!” “Did you seriously just stamp your foot? I thought girls only did that on TV.” I growled unimpressively.

“It’s awful. No privacy, no secrets. Everything you’re ashamed of, laid out for everyone to see.” He shuddered. “It sounds horrible,” I whispered. “It is sometimes helpful when we need to coordinate,”

“But I am a werewolf,” he said unwillingly. “And he is a vampire,” he added with obvious revulsion. “And I’m a Virgo!” I shouted, exasperated.

None of those freaky Virgos here.”

I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures.

“I was overly theatrical. It was kind of childish, really. I wore a wedding dress I’d stolen for the occasion. He screamed when he saw me. He screamed a lot that night. Saving him for last was a good idea—it made it easier for me to control myself, to make it slower—”

“He doesn’t like to tell other people’s stories—he feels like he’s betraying confidences, because he hears so much more than just the parts they mean for him to hear.” She smiled and shook her head. “I probably ought to give him more credit. He’s really quite decent, isn’t he?”

Even when we first met Tanya’s clan in Denali—all those females!—Edward never showed the slightest preference. And then he met you.” She looked at me with confused eyes. I was only half paying attention.

“Don’t you see, Bella?” Her voice was suddenly more passionate than before, even while she’d told her unhappy story. “You already have everything. You have a whole life ahead of you—everything I want. And you’re going to just throw it away. Can’t you see that I’d trade everything I have to be you? You have the choice that I didn’t have, and you’re choosing wrong!”

“I got luckier than I deserved. Emmett is everything I would have asked for if I’d known myself well enough to know what to ask for. He’s exactly the kind of person someone like me needs.

You don’t want to be rash about permanent things,

He loves you more than you know. It terrifies him to be away from you.”

“It’s so hard to describe. It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her.… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother.

I didn’t care that I was supposed to be angry with him. I didn’t care that I was supposed to be angry with everyone. I reached out for him, found his hands in the darkness, and pulled myself closer to him.

“You’re quite adorable when you’re jealous. It’s surprisingly enjoyable.”

“Sleep, my Bella. Dream happy dreams. You are the only one who has ever touched my heart. It will always be yours. Sleep, my only love.”

“Is Jacob paying you for all the P.R., or are you a volunteer?” Charlie grumbled incoherently at me until the food cut off his garbled complaint.

“He’s being pretty dang pleasant about this; you don’t need to push your luck.” He laughed again, louder than before—he found what I’d said very funny indeed. I tried to see the joke as he walked around the Rabbit to hold my door open for me. “Bella,” he finally said—still chuckling—as he shut the door behind me, “you can’t push what you don’t have.”

I’d lost count of how many hot dogs he’d eaten after his tenth.

Hanging out with no one but extremely dexterous people all the time was going to give me a complex.

Me irl

I was treated like someone who belonged.

after a few hours of watching Jared watch Kim, I could no longer find anything plain about the girl. The way he stared at her! It was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. Like a collector finding an undiscovered Da Vinci, like a mother looking into the face of her newborn child.

used the magic to defend our land. “He and all his warriors left the ship—not their bodies, but their spirits. Their women watched over the bodies and the waves, and the men took their spirits back to our harbor. “They could not physically touch the enemy tribe, but they had other ways. The stories tell us that they could blow fierce winds into their enemy’s camps; they could make a great screaming in the wind that terrified their foes. The stories also tell us that the animals could see the spirit warriors and understand them; the animals would do their bidding.

And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood! But, till then—if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me—till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head! The three words that had caught my eye were “drank his blood.” I shuddered. Yes, surely I must have dreamt that Edward said anything positive about Heathcliff. And this page was probably not the page he’d been reading. The book could have fallen open to any page.

I knew exactly what I wanted, but I was suddenly terrified of getting it.

He exhaled sharply. “You were worried I wouldn’t like you?” he demanded. Then, before I could answer, he was laughing. “Bella, for a fairly intuitive person, you can be so obtuse!”

“there’s no point to forever without you. I wouldn’t want one day without you.”

“in my mind, marriage and eternity are not mutually exclusive or mutually inclusive concepts. And since we’re living in my world for the moment, maybe we should go with the times, if you know what I mean.” “But on the other hand,” he countered, “you will soon be leaving time behind you altogether. So why should the transitory customs of one local culture affect the decision so much?”

“Dum, dum, dah-dum,” I hummed under my breath. I was going for the wedding march, but it sort of sounded like a dirge.

The idea of conquest was dying out; it was mostly vengeance and feuding now. So many had lost their partners, and that is something our kind does not forgive.…

“Maria was mystified by my ever-deteriorating frame of mind. She’d never felt a moment’s depression, and I wondered why I was different.

“You’ve experienced the way I can manipulate the emotions around myself, Bella, but I wonder if you realize how the feelings in a room affect me. I live every day in a climate of emotion. For the first century of my life, I lived in a world of bloodthirsty vengeance. Hate was my constant companion. It eased some when I left Maria, but I still had to feel the horror and fear of my prey.

Edward’s patience was endless. He waited politely through the whole conversation, just playing with my hair and smiling whenever I looked up. It was probably superficial to notice such things while I had so many more important things to think about, but his smile still knocked the breath out of me. He was so beautiful that it made it hard sometimes to think about anything else, hard to concentrate on Phil’s troubles or Renée’s apologies or hostile vampire armies. I was only human.

It was childish, but I liked the idea that his lips would be the last good thing I would feel. Even more embarrassingly, something I would never say aloud, I wanted his venom to poison my system. It would make me belong to him in a tangible, quantifiable way.

You decide, Bella. You can have me the way I am—bad behavior included—or not at all.”

There really is something irresistible about a lost cause.”

“Until your heart stops beating, Bella,” he said. “I’ll be here—fighting. Don’t forget that you have options.”

“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.”

“Just think about it, Bella.” “No,” I said stubbornly. “You will. Tonight. And I’ll be thinking about you while you’re thinking about me.” “Like I said, a nightmare.” He grinned over at me. “You kissed me back.” I gasped, unthinkingly balling my hands up into fists again, hissing when my broken hand reacted.

“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?”

What was a motivating prize when you had everything?

“She was translating the Battle Hymn of the Republic into Arabic, actually. When she finished that, she moved on to Korean sign language.”