Anne Rice
I think any supernatural hero today, whether he's a vampire, werewolf, a resuscitated mummy, whatever he is, is going to have to deal with the fact that scientists are going to want to catch him and study him. His big enemy is not going to be Dr. Van Helsing today, it's going to be the doctor who wants to put him in a lab and get his blood for what it can do to cure disease or grant immortality.Collection: Hero
How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described.Collection: Pathetic
But all morality is of necessity shaped by context. I'm not talking relativism, no. To ignore the context of a decision is in fact immoral.Collection: Talking
Without memory there can be no insight. Without love, there can be no appreciation.Collection: Appreciation
Because," she said, "that is what men would call it. They invented Satan, didn't they? Satanic is merely the name they give to the behavior of those who would disrupt the orderly way in which men want to live.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Looks
I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.Collection: Lying
That morning I was not yet a vampire, and I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely, and yet I can't recall any sunrise before it. I watched the whole magnificence of the dawn for the last time as if it were the first. And then I said farewell to sunlight, and set out to become what I became.Collection: Morning
His blood coursed through my veins sweeter than life itself. And as it did, Lestats words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed and when I heard his heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.Collection: Heart
The one thing you share with every mortal is death.Collection: Share
Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters.Collection: Stars
The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her.Collection: Queens
In these last few days, we were close because we were both mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that’s all changed. You have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I still see death when I look at you. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mineCollection: Twilight
God, why didn't you make us all dogs?Collection: Dog
You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.Collection: Devil
I saw finally the futility of all these gestures, that witchcraft is but a matter of focus-that one cann apply one's fierce and immeasurable energies to an act of choice.Collection: Choices
From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries. I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its heart.Collection: Dream
But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.Collection: Art
And this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on.Collection: Water
Do we have to confess our loves to everyone?" asked Thorne softly. "Can we not keep some secrets?Collection: Secret
I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself.Collection: Men
And what if I never go of my own free will? Will you pitch me from some window so that I must fly or fall? Will you bolt all shutters after me? You had better, because I'll knock and knock and knock until I fall down dead. I'll have no wings that take me away from you.Collection: Fall
I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.Collection: Eye
That is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.Collection: Compassion
One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!Collection: Running
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.Collection: Night
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.Collection: Grieving
You see,' [Armand] said, 'killing other vampires is very exciting; that is why it is forbidden under penalty of death.Collection: Killing Others
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.Collection: Thinking
Handsome enough' is this Grim Reaper, Who can snuff all these 'brief candles,' every fluttering soul sucking the air, from this hall" -The Vampire LestatCollection: Air
You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that no darkness has ever been deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love. And all around me in this world I see evidence of love. I see love. I see it in the human struggle. I see its undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished in their poetry, their painting, their music, their love of one another and refusal to accept suffering as their lot.Collection: Struggle
Yet I saw crypts when I looked at him, and I heard the beat of kettledrums. I saw torchlit fields where I had never been, heard vague incantations, felt the heat of raging fires on my face. And they didn't come out of him, these visions. Rather I drew them out on my own. Yet I never had Nicolas, mortal or immortal, been so alluring. Never had Gabrielle held me so in thrall. Dear God, this is love. This is desire. And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this." — Lestat de LioncourtCollection: Past
What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world?Collection: Mean
I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose.Collection: Halloween
All the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours between dawn and dusk.Collection: Enemy
You never know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest colours.Collection: Mind
I felt ravaged, and with both hands in a fantasy I reached out for her figure as we ran together through the meadow which belonged only to us and to which these others could never be admitted."Oh, inocent love," she said even as she drank from me, "oh, innocent innocent love."Collection: Love
Lestat: I despise you! I ought to destroy you-finish what I started when I made you. Turn you into ashes and sift them through my hands. You know that I could do it! Like that! Like the snap of mortal fingers, I could do it. Burn you as I burnt your little house. And nothing could save you, nothing at all.Collection: Hands
Sweet to think on it, that when we are last weary of all this world there is the rising sunCollection: Sweet
His Back was turned to the end of the world and the end of the world was quiet.Collection: World
You were the vampire in my dream. My perfect one.Collection: Dream
Memory was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything.Collection: Memories
For always in her there was a dark place full of despair and a great dividing force to make meaning because there was none.Collection: Dark
As if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.Collection: Night
Because I show you my pain, I do not of necessity love you.Collection: Pain
And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.Collection: Pain
Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.Collection: Pain
I don't like myself you know. I love myself. I'm devoted to myself till my dying day. But I don't like myself.Collection: Dying