Quotes from Anne Rice/ Christopher Rice

To witness the degree to which victorious nations simplified and cheapened the narratives of their rivals?

Stories of romance and adventure and magic helped us to imagine a better world into being, however gradually. In the telling of every fairy tale, the listener and the teller took another step towards nobility.

When one is immortal, she had written, one does not claim the touch of another in a desperate way. One is not fearful of losing it and so one does not seek to contain or restrict or describe it in language that must fail.

Don't be so certain of anything. There are many experiences within the Shaktanis that I wish to share with you. You may read and absorb them at your leisure. But do absorb them, Ramses. Don't leap to rash conclusions. Don't diminish them into a hasty code of morals and laws for beings such as us. Let them embrace you so they may guide you.

Ah, the marvel of queens. Even in ancient times he had heard talk of queens protecting their kingdoms, while kings go forth to conquer new ones, of queens protecting their power, while kings seek more. And in modern times, he had heard tell of a great queen, Elizabeth of England, who had followed this very path, protecting her great kingdom and its far-flung colonies, but never initiating a war to gain increased power or land.

I'm now privy to a great truth. Our souls, the souls we believe to be part and parcel of our bodies, are immortal, and those souls follow their own path. I possess a soul that once belonged to another, and after I die, that soul will travel on. Most human beings live and die without ever having such a great truth revealed to them. But it has been revealed to me.

How can this magnificent modern world enter into war? How can these modern people who know so much, who've come so far, suddenly be on the attack against one another?

Call me Ramses the Damned. For that is the name I have given myself. But I was once Ramses the Great of Upper and Lower Egypt, slayer of the Hittites, father of many sons and daughters, who ruled Egypt for sixty-four years.

Ah, the loneliness, the unspeakable loneliness, how it presses on the heart.

Were they Moorish? Were they Gothic? And what was the name for the finely turned little posts on the balconies? Balusters. So many words ran through his mind, with their infinite connotations—decadent, baroque, grandeur, rococo, monumental, enduring, tragic.