Anne Rice

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel every particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share."---Forward to Kafka's Short stories”

“I find at moments I'm as fragile as glass.”

“And then the most evil idea came to me. The idea came to me unbidden as if there really were a Satan in the world and that Satan had come crawling along the stone floor towards me and put the idea in my mind.”

“I've always been my own teacher. And I must confess I've been my favorite pupil a well.”

“It was almost as if he had become, in his inveterate goodness, a little bit of a simpleton as is bound to happen, I think, if and when one gives oneself absolutely to God.”

“That's the glory of it; thousands of years have passed and yet you can follow Him so close!”

“But in every family there are bad people, and weak people, and some people who can't or won't withstand the trials of life, and who fail spectacularly. Their guardian angels weep; demons beholding them dance for joy.But only The Maker decides what ultimately happens to them.”

“Genealogy belongs to the rich in human history. The poor rise and fall without leaving a footprint.”

“People swindle themselves out of Salvation with great regularity.”

“Our emotions are different but we have them. We never cast a cold eye on life or death. Don't misunderstand our seeming serenity. After all, we live in a world of perfect trust in The Maker, and we are keenly aware that humans often do not, and we feel an active sorrow for them.”

“People create these extravagant habitats because they have vision, love of beauty, hopes and dreams.”

“It was because historians made it sound so coherent, so purposeful, so complete. They'd take an entire century and impose a meaning on it, a personality, a destiny-and his was, of course, a lie.”

“...he didn't know where I lived, because I think he feared, in his heart of hearts, that I didn't trust him, that my work had slowly eroded the love for him which I felt.But I did trust him...I did love him. I didn't love anyone in the world but him. I just didn't want anyone to know where I lived.”

“One can't be a killer every moment of one's life. Some humanity is going to show itself now and then, some hunger for normality, no matter what you do.”

“It was the night that the power went out in Berkeley that he'd finished Joyce's Finnegan's Wake by the light of a candle. Sometimes you need to be forced to study what's right in front of you.”

“An awareness had come over him that he wasn’t going to die. Loneliness in itself could not destroy him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept.”

“Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdall before the battle call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep, and the grass grow far away in the lands where the snow melts.”

“You understood my soul, I thought, and now others are coming only to sack my heart of all its riches. What am I to do? We argued, yes, you and I, but it was with loving respect, was it not? I cannot endure without you. Please come to me, from wherever you are.”

“Of course the moment I saw the books, I was overcome with pleasure. This always happens with me. I feel foolishly safe with books which can be a mistake.”

“He had grieved for me, I'll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears become him like jewels.”

“‎There's no way to cheat a sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.”

“First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.”

“And it was not merely the dry hissing coil of the thirst that was quenched and dissolved, it was all my craving, all the want and misery and hunger that I had ever known.”

“If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music. . you wouldn't see darkness. . you'd see an illumination that is all your own. . light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns.”

“But what I felt was inexpressible gratitude for the music, that in this horror there could be something as beautiful as that.”

“And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.”

“My last sunrise. That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise before it.”

“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?”

“I stumble through a carnival of horrors”

“Some mysteries are simply irresistible,” she said. “They have components that alter a life.”

“There was something vampiric about. . music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who don't believe in the supernatural. . .the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music.”

“Anger is too pathetic. Anger is as weak as fear.”

“The fact that I loved you was the greatest lie I have ever lived.”

“Sleep is your friend. Dreams are your unwelcome guests.”

“Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling.”

“Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.”

“As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood.”

“I don't believe in anything, Mother," I said. "You told Armand long ago that you believe you'll find answers in the great jungles and forests; that the stars will finally reveal a vast truth. But I don't believe in anything. And that makes me stronger than you think”

“It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.”

“I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.”

“What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness ofnormality that is just a myth.”

“I was just walking around saying “We’re all gonna die!” I never got over it. I went to class, I did what I had to do, but I was a gibbering idiot. It never went away. I never again felt the same way about life and death.”

“They know how bad they are. They don't care. They do what they do because...because they love it.”

“You think I'm defeated. You think you've passed your judgement and that's the end of it. Oh, you think it's as simple as that. Well you are wrong. I shall never have vengeance for this moment, but you will see me again. You will see me again.”

“I believe that I must do everything I can do to lessen misery. That's all I can do, and that is something enormous. It is a great power.”

“You are the pure embodiment of madness.”

“Lestat, what did I say last night?' he asked. 'You are the damnedest creature!”

“We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us.”

“Strong women are absolutely unpredictable.”

“I would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not love me!" -Claudia.”