“Sometimes the dolls of the Hopi Indians of New Mexico have heads which represent, schematically, a medieval castle. I shall try to enter that castle. There are no doors; the ramparts have the thickness of a thousand centuries. It is not in ruins, as you might think.”

“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.”

“Like the castle in its cornerIn a medieval gameI foresee terrible troubleAnd I stay here just the same.”

“You have a lovely castle,” she noted, looking around while sitting on a couch and crossing her legs before she tipped her face up to Lucien and asked mock petulantly. “Why don’t we have a castle, darling?”“You want a castle, sweetling, I’ll get you a castle,” Lucien answered casually.”

“You build a thousand castles, a thousand sanctuaries, you are nothing; you build a library, you are everything!”

“If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.”