Quotes from Anne Rice

Who said you had to be human to have a soul? Everything that is self-conscious and capable of thought and love has a soul. The soul emanates from self-conscious. The soul is the expression of self-consciousness. The soul is generated by organized self-consciousness.

My last sunrise,' said the vampire. 'That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise.

Your soul is your inner being, your thinking, reasoning, loving, choosing inner being. Your capacity to stand up for what is right. Your capacity to fight against what is wrong. Your capacity to choose even to die for what you believe is right. That's your soul.

But there is no value to suffering!

except how much all of us give up in this life, sooner or later, because we can never have all that we want. You'll find out soon enough. We're blessed, my dear. Quite blessed, but no life is without sacrifices.

Understand the style of garment that adorns your body, the styles of dwellings in which you spend your leisure hours, the place in which you hunt. Understand what it means to feel the passage of time! Yes, and feel all the pain of seeing things die... Of course. You are made to triumph over time, not to run from it.

God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are none so like him as ourselves.

Maybe all of life has a mind,' she said, her eyes roving over the small room, over the empty tables. 'Maybe the flowers watch us. Maybe the trees think and hate us that we can walk. Or maybe, just maybe they don't care. The horror of Lasher is that he has begun to care!

All I want here is a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all.

Who were the men who did this? Guido demanded suddenly. Tonio was putting on his cloack. He looked up as if already in deep thought. Fools, he answered, at the command of a coward. page 139

Use the power inside you. Don't abhor it anymore. Use that power! And when they see you in the streets above, use that power to make your face a mask and think as you gaze on them as on anyone: beware.

Making him to be my mate, I made a mirror who saw me all the more clearly as a monster.

The only pain in pleasure is the pleasure of pain

Nem tehetünk egyebet - gondolta magában -, mint küzdünk az életben maradásért, megÅ'rizzük ép elménket, és tanúként szemlélve a világot abban reménykedünk, hogy ez az egész valahogy értelmet nyer.

and then he glanced at the ceiling and, making a fist with his right hand, he gasped, Damn you... God! Damn you!

Everything is coming to an end, I thought. But what does that mean? Why do I say things to myself when I don't even know what they mean?

Those Who Must Be Kept are at peace, or in silence. More than that we may never know.

And now we stand again on the cusp of an atheistic age—an age where the Christian faith is losing its hold, as paganism once lost its hold, and the new humanism, the belief in man and his accomplishments and his rights, is more powerful than ever before.

The belief in a special destiny is one of the most rampant and harmful delusions on earth.

There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime. There was never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens in which we wandered. Our souls were too out of tune, our desires crossed and our resentments to common and too well watered for the final flowering.

You're mine, of my flesh and of my blood.

Do it for a world that will never knew you or thank you, but a world that you can now truly save.

Nothing vanishes quite like pain—when pain does vanish, that is. Because most of the time pain never does.

You know what it takes to teach philosophy here? You have to lie. You have to fling meaningless words as fast as you can at young people, and brood when you can't answer, and make up nonsense and ascribe it to the old Stoics.