Quotes from Anne Rice

He bent close to me, and suddenly kissed me, in a manner that seemed entirely childlike and also a bit European.

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

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.

And it is a great fact of history that the most mediocre and well-meaning imbeciles can strike down the mighty with surprising effectiveness when there is such a huge disparity of souls.

Come on, show me all you can do.

I can't tell you exactly, any more than I could tell you exactly what is the experience of sex if you have never had it.

The waiter had set down the hot drinks, and the steam did feel glorious. The piano played Satie ever so softly. Life was almost worth living, even for a son of a bitch of a monster like myself.

memory is desperate to leave us. Memory knows that we cannot endure its company. Memory would reduce us to fools.

Evil is anything that goes against life, harms life, stifles life, destroys life. Evil is bringing harm to another person, inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, or confusion. All evil comes from this. This is the root of all evil.

It was as if I had only just been able to see colours and shapes for the first time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long time.

The horror was, Cleopatra meant something to these modern people of the twentieth century which was altogether wrong. She had become a symbol of licentiousness, when in fact she had possessed a multitude of amazing talents. They had punished her for her one flaw by forgetting everything else…Remembered, but not for what she was. A painted whore lying on a silken couch. - Ramses

Only love could create such conflict, such longing, such fear.

But to think there was meaning, a scheme to things, well, that was quite beyond her philosophical reach. She feared as she always had, that all that was ever meant was loneliness, hard work, striving to make a difference when no difference could possibly be made. It was like dipping a stick into the ocean and trying to write something – all the little people of the world spinning out little patterns that lasted no more than a few years, and meant nothing at all.

Those who desire power want to be immune to the power of others.

God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.

Dear God, this is love. This is desire. And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this. And it seemed in a murmuring pulse of thought he gave me to know that I had been very foolish to think it would not be so. Who can love us, you and I, as we can love each other, he whispered and it seemed his lips actually moved.

If I could, I'd deliver you from old age and death, from aches and pains, from the blandishments of ghosts, from the torment of your familiar, Goblin. I'd deliver you from heat and cold and from the arid dullness of the noonday sub. I'd deliver you into the placid light of the moon and into the domain of the Milky Way forever.

You painted armless beings, swimming in blinding color, and they had to exist like that forever. Could they see you with all those tiny, scattered eyes? Or did they only see the heaven and hell of their own shining realm, anchored to the studs in the wall by a piece of twisted wire?

What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which gave its wintry glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I remembered no one who had ever lived and breathed within my quietly moving form~ The Vampire Armand

His beauty has always maddened me. I think I idealize him in my mind when I'm not with him; but then when I see him again I'm overcome.

I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side.

Maharet's skin, which had been so pale and almost luminous in life, so like the inner lining of a seashell.

nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this—that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life.

But remember the overall lesson, that your love for others, and their love for you, that the increase of love in life itself around you, is what matters.