"It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room.There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.
They didn't look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big — muscled like a serious weight lifter,with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky,less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.
The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on herself-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black,cropped short and pointing in every direction.
And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hairtones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes — purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.
But all this is not why I couldn't look away.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful —maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.
Stephenie Meyer, "Twilight"
"About three things I was absolutely positive.
First, Edward was a vampire.
Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.
And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.
Stephenie Meyer, "Twilight"
" "Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason… And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."
Stephenie Meyer, "New Moon"
" She was dreaming of me.
Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to.
"Stay," she sighed. "Don't go. Please...don't go."
She was dreaming of me, and it wasn't even a nightmare. She wanted me to stay with her, there in her dream.
I struggled to find words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them.
When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been.
My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?
At the time that I had become a vampire, trading my soul and my mortality for immortality in the searing pain of transformation, I had truly been frozen. My body had turned into something more like rock than flesh, enduring and unchanging. My self, also, had frozen as it was - my personality, my likes and my dislikes, my moods and my desires; all were fixed in place.
It was the same for the rest of them. We were all frozen. Living stone.
When change came for one of us, it was a rare and permanent thing. I had seen it happen with Carlisle, and then a decade later with Rosalie. Love had changed them in an eternal way, a way that never faded. More than eighty years had passed since Carlisle had found Esme, and yet he still looked at her with the incredulous eyes of first love. It would always be that way for them.
It would always be that way for me, too. I would always love this fragile human girl, for the rest of my limitless existence.
Stephenie Meyer, "Midnight Sun"
П. С. Наясно съм, че за повечето хора книгите от поредицата "Здрач" са прекалено тривиални, лигави и дори ги описват като "поредната вампирска история, която се продава, просто защото това е модерно в момента". Трябва да ви кажа, че аз не следвам сляпо модата. В нито един неин аспект. Включително и по отношение на това, което чета. За мен е важно не какво е модерно, а какво наистина на мен ми харесва.
Другото, което трябва да знаете е, че освен всичките ми вредни навици, аз лесно се пристрастявам. А откакто се помня съм вманиачена по истинската любов (да, тази от книгите и филмите!) и добре написаното четиво. Няма спор в две неща: 1.) Стефани Майър наистина е изключително талантлив писател. Готова съм да се изправя срещу всеки, за да защитя тезата си! Защото стилът и наистина е страхотно увлекателен. Пише експресивно, пише различно и притежава уникалната способност да обрисува човешките чувства и емоции в такава дълбочина, че читателят сякаш усеща биенето на сърцето на главната героиня; 2.) "Здрач" е една от най-добрите любовни истории, които съм чела. И то точно защото авторката е съумяла да опише тази любов толкова истински, с толкова плам, че самата аз поисках да изживея това неузнаваемо чувство, може би дори да срещна своя Едуард някой ден.
