Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets--as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris."
44 Quotes
"Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets--as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris."
"كانت باريس كوناً قائماً بذاته، عالماً متكاملاً، نحتته وصاغته يد التاريخ؛ هكذا بدت في عصر نابليون الثالث، بمبانيها الشاهقة، وكاتدرائياتها الضخمة، وجاداتها الفسيحة، وشوارعها القروسطية المتعرجة العتيقة – شاسعة ومنيعة كالطبيعة ذاتها. احتضنت كل شيء؛ من شعبها المتقلب الساحر الذي يغص بالمعارض والمسارح والمقاهي، إلى ما ينجبه مراراً وتكراراً من عبقرية وقداسة، وفلسفة وحرب، ولهو وأرقى الفنون؛ حتى ليخيل للمرء أنه لو غرق العالم بأسره خارجها في الظلام، لظل ما هو رفيع وجميل وجوهري يزهر فيها بأبهى حلله. حتى أشجارها الباسقة التي زينت شوارعها ووفرت لها الظل كانت متناغمة معها – ومياه السين، المحتواة والجميلة وهي تلتف في قلبها؛ حتى أن تلك البقعة من الأرض، التي صاغها الدم والوعي، لم تعد مجرد أرض، بل أضحت باريس."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"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."
"كان الأمر كما لو أنني أبصرت الألوان والأشكال للتو، للمرة الأولى. وقد سحرني من أزرار معطف ليستا الأسود ما جعلني لا أرى شيئًا سواها لوقت طويل."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Killing is no ordinary act,' said the vampire. 'One doesn't simply glut oneself on blood.' He shook his head. 'It is the experience of another's life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the experience when I sucked the blood from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I’d like to meet the devil some night,’ he said once with a malignant smile. ‘I’d chase him from here to the wilds of the Pacific. I am the devil."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Your body's dying...pay no attention"
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven’t tears enough for what you’ve done to me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight…I might have had that shape!’ Her pointed finger flew at Madeleine, whose hands had risen to her face, whose eyes were clouded over. Her moan was almost Claudia’s name. But Claudia did not hear her. ‘Yes, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your side."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"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."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible. And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"It seemed at momemts, When I sat alone in the dark stateroom, that the sky had come down to meet the sea and some great secert was to be revealed."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"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."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"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"
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer look "through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"... from the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like those states which I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against life itself. Every time he took a life it was revenge. It was no wonder, then, that he appreciated nothing. The nuances of vampire existence weren't even available to him because he was focused with a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he'd left. Consumed with hatred, he looked back. Consumed with envy, nothing pleased him unless he could take it from others; and once having it, he grew cold and dissatisfied, not loving the thing for itself; and so he went after something else. Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible."
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"I wish I could," laughed the vampire. "How positively delightful. I should like to pass through all manner of different keyholes and feel the tickle of their peculiar shapes. No." He shook his head. "That is, how would you say today . . . bullshit?"
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
"For what can the damned really have to say to the damned?"
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
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