“I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.”

“I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.”

“But no one will weep for me or for them. They have been buried, nameless, beneath five centuries of time.I am a vampire.My name is Vittorio, and I write this now in the tallest tower of the ruined mountaintop castle in which I was born, in the northernmost part of Tuscany, that most beautiful of lands in the very center of Italy.”

“I see." said the vampire thoughtfully.”

“The fans, the vampire groupies, love the idea of this androgynous, preternatural figure stalking the night, and craving aesthetic pleasure just as he craves blood, wearing only the best velvet clothes, and savoring red roses.”

“I wouldn't write a book to tell you that a vampire was happy.”

“That’s the case with most vampires, no matter who says otherwise. Beauty carries us to our doom. Or, to put it more accurately, we are made immortal by those who cannot sever themselves from our charms.”