Quotes from the Vampire Chronicles

Interview With The Vampire

"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 limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms."

Lestat - Interview with the Vampire

The Vampire Lestat

"I imagine drinking wine until I'm so drunk I strip off my clothes and bathe in the mountain streams naked... And
then I imagine going into the village... and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there -- crude
men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after the other, and feeling some magnificent
triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father and brothers, whether they are
alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one."

"It was the same the first time I bore a child," she said. "I was in agony for twelve hours, and I felt trapped in the
pain, knowing that the only release was the birth or my own death. When it was over, I had your brother Augustin in
my arms, but I didn't want anyone else near me. And it wasn't because I blamed them. It was only that I'd suffered
like that, hour after hour, that I'd gone into the circle of hell and come back out. They hadn't been in the circle of
hell. And I felt quiet all over. In this common occurrence, this vulgar act of giving birth, I understood the meaning of
utter loneliness."

Gabrielle - The Vampire Lestat

"...I hated the fact only extreme pain in me could ever wring from her the slightest warmth or interest."

"The contempt, the malice, came out of [Nicolas] in this low metallic sound. It was the very opposite of the sounds
made by the vampires. You could hear the human blood in it, the human thickness of it, echoing against the walls.
Ruddy and hot and strangely unfinished he seemed suddenly. the only mortal among us, like a child thrown among
porcelain dolls."

"But not uncivilized, no, not savage. She was not that. She was only reawakened, my goddess, risen like a
magnificent butterfly from its cocoon."

"And she had been awakened, she had risen “That music of yours could wake the dead”. I'd done it again."

"I will be the Vampire Lestat for all to see. A symbol, a freak of nature - something loved, something despised, all of
those things. I tell you I can't give it up. I can't miss. And quite frankly I am not in the least afraid."
"You can cover your white faces in greasepaint, and your extravagant gestures and facial expressions won't even be
noticed. You couldn't choose a more perfect disguise than that ... You could be seen by thousands who'd never guess
what you are."

"Yet the bitterness inside me did not subside.

I never forgot what it had been like when I was Lelio. I became a little crueler for what had happened, and I never,
never went again to the village fair. I conceived of the notion that I should never get away from here, and oddly
enough as my despair deepened, so my usefulness increased.

I alone put the fear of God into the servants or tenants by the time I was eighteen. I alone provided the food for us.
And for some strange reason this gave me satisfaction. I don't know why, but I liked to sit at the table and reflect
that everyone there was eating what I had provided."

Lestat - The Vampire Lestat

Queen of The Damned

Short little velvet laugh. "There you go again. So irrepressibly human. You overestimate me or underestimate me.
Seldom do you hit the mark."

"But where are we really?" Daniel asked. "Tell me!"

"I told you. It's just a dream. But if you want a name, let me call it the gateway of life and death. I'll bring you with
me through this gateway. And why? Because I am a coward. And I love you too much to let you go."

Daniel and Armand - Queen of the Damned

"I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil -- religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the
supernatural or the elegant abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human
race literally and figuratively to its knees."

Maharet - Queen of the Damned

"Do you love me now?" I asked. He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten
simultaneously when he smiled. "Yes."

Lestat - Queen of the Damned

The earth here is beautiful. And it still belongs to the dead.

Khayman - Queen of the Damned

" Let the spirits witness: for theirs is the knowledge of the future - both what it would be, and what I will: You are
the Queen of the Damned, that's what you are! Evil is your only destiny. But at your greatest hour, it is I who will
defeat you. Look well on my face. It is I who will bring you down."

Mekare's threat to Akasha - Queen of the Damned

" I kissed him suddenly, loving the warmth of him, the soft pliant feel of his near-human skin."

Lestat about Louis - Queen of the Damned

"Centuries ago in a palazzo in Venice, he had tried to capture in imperishable pigment the quality of this love. What
had been its lesson? That in all the world no two souls contain the same secret, the same gift of devotion or abandon;
that in a common child, a wounded child, he had found a blending of sadness and simple grace that would forever
break his heart? This one had understood him! This one had loved him as no other ever had."

About Marius and Armand - Queen of the Damned

"Acid. His thoughts were acid as he followed. He could not be of use to these immortals. Yet he walked on with
Mael and Santino into the light streaming from the windows beyond. The redwood forest had receded into shadow;
not a leaf moved. But the air was good here, warm here, full of fresh scents and without the sting of the north.
Armand. It made him want to weep."

Marius POV - Queen of the Damned

"We shall live even in this state of living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy all who would judge and
destroy us."

Akasha - Queen of the Damned

"In the chapple you preyed to be a saint and now I will make you a god."

Akasha - Queen of the Damned

Tales of The Body Thief

"Ah, come now. I look like an angel, but I'm not. The old rules of nature encompass many creatures like me. We're
beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped tiger, yet we're merciless killers."

Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

I thought of his eyes, oh how beautiful they would be if he were not looking out of them.
 Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

"I'm finished with all such quests. I look to the world around me now for truths, truths mired in the physical and the
aesthetic, truths I can fully embrace. I care about your vision b/c you saw it, you told me, and I love you. But that’s
all."

Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious. "I love you," he
said softly. I was amazed.

Lestat about Louis - Tale of the Body Thief

How shameful. How predictable! How insipid. And how sweet.

Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

"I grabbed her ankle and kissed it, and when I looked up I saw her chin and her eyelashes as she threw back her head
and laughed."

Lestat about Claudia - Tale of the Body Thief

" I saw myself walking in Paris in the old days when I was alive. I was wearing the red velvet cloak, lined with the
fur of the wolves I'd killed back in my native Auvergne, never dreaming that things lurked in the shadows, things
that could see you and fall in love with you, just because you were young, things that could take your life, just
because they loved you and you'd slain a whole pack of wolves"

Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

"I would find the building where Gabrielle and I had worked the Dark Magic together, mother leading her son to
make her his daughter, and mortal life had released her as if it were a mere hand I'd grabbed by the wrist.'

Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

... her face, her eyes, her golden curls. A child staring back at me out of the mask of innocence. Or was this a mask.?
Lestat - Tale of the Body Thief

"The meaning of charity is not to fall in love."

Gretchen - Tale of the Body Thief

"But then he is so good at grieving! He wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like light of candles;
 Tears become him like jewels. Well, none of that works for me."
Lestat about Louis - Tale of the Body Thief

Memnoch The Devil

He bent close to me and kissed me in a manner that seemed entirely childlike. "You're in deep trouble," he said.
Lestat about Armand - Memnoch the Devil

In a way he made me think of a child doll, with brilliant faintly red-brown glass eyes - a doll that had been found in
an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more radiant than he was.
"That's what you always want," he said softly... "When you found me under Les Innocents," he said, "you wanted to
bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet with great embroidered sleeves."
"Yes," I said, "and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair." My tone was angry. "You look good to me, you
damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love."
Lestat and Armand - Memnoch the Devil

"...You are the Devil. Yes. But you're not evil? Why?"
"Completely irrelevant question. Or let me put it a little more mysteriously. It's completely unnecessary for me to be
evil..."
Lestat and Memnoch - Memnoch the Devil

"Sing," I whispered. I was talking to the ghosts of the children. "Sing."

But the convent was empty. All the little ghosts had fled. The convent was mine. Memnoch's servant; Memnoch's
prince. I was alone in my prison.
Lestat - Memnoch the Devil

"I'm ready to go to Hell but I don't believe you are what you claim to be. You're something like me, something
without scientific explanation but behind it all there's a cheap core of facts that will eventually lay bear everything,
even the texture of each black feather on your wings."
Lestat - Memnoch the Devil

The Vampire Armand

Curses of vanished elders echoed down on me; too pretty, too soft, too pale, eyes far too full of the Devil, ah, that
devilish smile.
Armand - The Vampire Armand

You never know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest colors.
Armand - The Vampire Armand

For a nameless beggar in a makeshiftboat for a bed we have no tears.

Armand - The Vampire Armand

Sweet to think on it, that when we are last weary of all this world there is the rising sun.
Armand - The Vampire Armand

Perhaps I fear him because I could love him again, and in loving him, I would come to need him, and in needing
him, I would again be his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for me is no substitute for the
passion which long ago blazed in his eyes.
Armand about Marius - The Vampire Armand

"...I saw these men and knew what they wanted, that this was vice, and despicable, and the price of it was Hell."
Armand - The Vampire Armand

"Your brown eyes are amber when the fire catches them," he whispered. "Oh but they are lustrous and dark, two
glossy mirrors in which I see myself even as they keep their secrets, these dark portals of a rich soul."
Marius - The Vampire Armand

"Cathedrals rise from dust, to show man wonder. And in the stones men carve the Danse Macabre to show that life
is brief. We carry scythes in the army of the robed skeleton who is carved on a thousand doorways, a thousand
walls. We are the followers of Death, whose cruel visage is drawn in a million tiny prayer books which the rich and
poor alike hold in their hands."
Santino - The Vampire Armand

"In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?"
Alessandra - The Vampire Armand

"I'm trimmed in memories as if in old furs. I lift my arm and the sleeve of memory covers it. I look around and see
other times. But you know what frightens me the most -- it is that this state, like so many others with me, will prove
the verge of nothing but extend itself over centuries."

Armand - The Vampire Armand

"What I think is that when you make a book, you tell the tale as you would like to know it!"

"I see no great wisdom in that."

"Well, then think, for most speech is a mere issue of our feelings, a mere explosion. Listen, note the way that you
make these outbursts."

"I don't want to."

"But you do, but they are not the words you want to read. When you write, something different happens. You make
a tale, no matter how fragmented or experimental or how disregarding of all conventional and helpful forms. Try
this for me."

David and Armand - The Vampire Armand

Merrick

Blood And Gold

The Blackwood Farm

Pandora

Vittorio The Vampire