Anne Rice Quotes - Page 3

I was just walking around saying “We’re all gonna die!” I never got over it. I went to class, I did what I had to do, but I was a gibbering idiot. It never went away. I never again felt the same way about life and death.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

She had understood before she had ever dreamed of a city such as this, where every texture, every color, leapt out at you, where every fragrance was a drug, and the air itself was something alive and breathing.

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.

Evil is a point of view ... God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately ... for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves.God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are none so like him as ourselves.

But I still did not realize how mad she was, and how accustomed to dreaming; and that she would not cry out for reality, rather would feed reality to her dreams, a demon elf feeding her spinning wheel with the reeds of the world so she might make her own weblike universe.

Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing.

Ah, but prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves,' Khayman said. 'That's the magic of it. We all understood it in ancient times. The power of charms is the power of the will; you might say that we were all geniuses of psychology in those dark days, that we could be slain by the power of another's designs. And the dreams, Marius, the dreams are but a part of the great design.

I'm speaking of the character of human beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't accept a useless life just because they were born to it. I mean those who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do things..." He was moved by this, and I was a little surprised that I'd said it. Yet I felt I'd had hurt him somehow. "There is blessedness in that." I said. "There's sanctity. And God or no God, there is goodness in it. I know this the way I know the mountains are out there, that the stars shine.

For what can the damned really have to say to the damned?

Three generations before I was the one meant for the necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in theair, yes, lift my body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him.

And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have.

Let the flesh instruct the mind.

No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don’t you think? The young are eternally desperate,” he said frankly. “And books, they offer hope — that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe one is saved.

All my life,I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid.

Is there any one of us who doesn’t want to strike back at all the evil in this world?

I tell you, Richard, if you ever get ready to sell your soul, don’t bother to sell it to another human being. It’s bad business to even consider such a thing.

The truth is laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought choked half strangled or surrendered to with humiliation.

Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.

You think he has no will of his own? You are a fool,Charlotte. Lie with him instead of me!’ I laughed at her, and seeing the pain in her eyes, I laughed more.‘I should like to see it, you and your daimon. Lie there and call him to come now.

The greatest create of power you have on earth, whether you are an angel, a spirit, a man or woman or child is to help others.

Memory was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything.

It was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.

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.

I watched him rise from the coffin, with slow, elegant gestures; our gestures, for we are the only beings who routinely rise from coffins.

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. — 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. Good luck.

Knowledge drifts in and out of my mind", said Lestat with a little look of honest distress and a shake of his head. "I devour it and then I lose it and sometimes I can't reach for any knowledge that I ought to possess. I feel desolate, but then knowledge returns or I seek it out in a knew source."(...)"But you love books, then", Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen."Oh, yes," Lestat said. "Sometimes they're the only thing that keeps me alive.""What a thing to say at your age", she laughed."No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

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.

And this time as the lashes come, try to think about the pain, instead of against it, because there is not one single aspect of life, past, present, or future, that does not tear your reason from you, to think on it. So think about the pain. This pain after all has its limits. You can chart its passage through your body. It has a beginning, middle, end. Imagine if it had a color. The first cut of the lash is what, red? Red, spreading into a brilliant yellow. And this one again, red, red, no yellow, and then white, white, white, white. . .Why have you incarcerated yourself in this palazzo of torture chambers, why do you not leave this place? Because you are a monster and this is a school for monsters, and if you leave here, then you will be completely, completely alone! Alone with this!Don't weep in front of these strangers. Swallow it down. Don't weep in front of these strangers! Cry to heaven, cry to heaven, cry to heaven.

First time my master’s in English literature ever proved useful.

I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find out the answer as to why we were ever alive. Even the avowed atheist probably thinks that in death he'll get some answer. I mean God will be there, or there won't be anything at all.'But that's just it,' I said, 'we don't make any discovery at that moment! We merely stop! We pass into nonexistence without ever knowing a thing.' I saw the universe, a vision of the sun, the planets, the stars, black night going on forever. And I began to laugh.'Do you realize that! We'll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it's over!' I shouted at Nicolas, who was sitting back on the bed, nodding and drinking his wine out of a flagon. 'We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witness to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!

Lasher,’ she said, ‘for the wind which you send that lashes the grasslands, for the wind that lashes the leaves from the trees.

One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before.

It was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world...on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves.

Your body's dying...pay no attention

Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity must wait.

It has its dark splendor, to walk the nightmare terrain forever.

The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.

As I looked down at him, as I saw his yellow hair pressed against my coat, I had a vision of him from long ago, that tall, stately gentleman in the swirling black cape, with his head thrown back, his rich, flawless voice singing the lilting air of the opera from which we'd only just come, his walking stick tapping the cobblestones in time with the music, his large, sparkling eye catching the young woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a smile spread over his face as the song died on his lips; and for one moment, that one moment when his eye met hers, all evil seemed obliterated in that flush of pleasure, that passion for merely being alive.

But there is no value to suffering!

When he speaks into your ear so thatno one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he’s passed to you from Deirdre. But it’s a lie, my dear,a vicious lie. He’ll make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he’s done tothem all.’ She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes drifting off across the dusty surface of thetable. ‘Except for those who were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be,and use him for their own ends… ’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Their own endless wickedness.

...But still, even now, to think of it, I feel something akin to that happiness. And I've more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so much in love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me feel it.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not.

Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?

It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.

Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. 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.

Without memory there can be no insight. Without love, there can be no appreciation.

Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof. I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans. Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man.

Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.

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.

If goodness does exist, then I'm the opposite of it. I'm evil, and I revel in it

Lestat: Toughen up baby. I'm looking for the eternal scum.

And he would listen, making only a few comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct impression he had solved everything for me.

We live in a world full of accidents finally in which on aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever striving to create and maintain an ethical balance. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky – such brutal beauty is beyond dispute.

I'll write about my past but I won't talk about it. I'll turn it into art if I can, but I won't talk about it.

There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time. No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I was still among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy, gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge, some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so alone.

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me best to another.

The Maker offers us creation itself as proof of his greatness.

And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.