Quotes from Anne Rice

And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life.

The sky was growing dangerously light when I left Lestat and made my way to the secret place, below an abandoned building where I kept the iron coffin in which I lie. This is no unusual configuration among our kind-the sad old building, my title to it, or the cellar room cut off from the world above by iron doors no mortal could independently seek to lift.

But joy, the joy you've known, the love you've known, that is what matters, and we, the conscious ones, the ones who can grieve, only we can know joy.

You, know, the only thing I can be is a writer. I'm absolutely unprepared for anything else. When you've lived the kind of life I have, you are good for nothing. Only writing can save you.

His hands would soon be trembling and he would have indigestion, but he didn't care. When you love coffee you abandon everything to that love.

She was innately suspicious of language because she could "hear" with remarkable accuracy what lay behind it, and also she just didn't know how to talk very well.

I've watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries. They're miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They hate being human! They know already that it's some sort of dirty trick.

People swindle themselves out of Salvation with great regularity.

The disparity between outward appearances and inner disposition had disturbed me all my life.

We are the things that others fear, I said. Remember that.

I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me. 'Let's go to bed,' he said softly.

I wanted none of it finally. And, deserving nothing better, I closed up like a spider in the flame of a match. And even Armand who was my constant companion, and my only companion, existed at a great distance from me, beyond that veil which separated me from all living things, a veil which was a form of shroud.

must somehow move to my restoration. I could not sink back in agony for that would breed but more agony. I must go on.

Don't be a fool for the devil, darling! Unless he treats you a damn sight better than the Almighty!

Master, the paintings, the paintings in the storage rooms! I cried. Forget the paintings. It's too late. Boys, run from here, get out now, save yourselves from the fire. Knocking the attackers back, he shot up the stairwell and called down to me from the uppermost railing. Come, Amadeo, fight them off, believe in your strength, child, fight.

The blood ran in tiny rivulets down his white face, as if from Christ's Crown of Thorns, his long blond hair flying out as he turned full circle, his hand ripping at his shirt, tearing it open down his chest, the black tie loose and falling. His pale crystalline blue eyes were glazed and shot with blood as he screamed the unimportant lyrics.

And then the most evil idea came to me. The idea came to me unbidden as if there really were a Satan in the world and that Satan had come crawling along the stone floor towards me and put the idea in my mind.

You really have need of very little, but each of us must decide how much he wants.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

The Romans can not be condemned for the conquest of Egypt; we were conquered by time itself in the end. And all the wonders of this brave new century should draw me from my grief and yet I can not heal my heart; and so the mind suffers; the mind closes as if it were a flower without sun

Goodnight my darling one. My dark angel Gabrielle.

To die or not to die, that is the question; it is nobler to live in torment and rage than not to live at all?

I don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is.

Wisdom is strength. Collect yourself, whatever you are, into something with a purpose.'