Top 425 Quotes & Sayings by Anne Rice - Page 3

You were the vampire in my dream. My perfect one.

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.

Pride is the parent of destruction; pride eats the mind and the heart and the soul alive.

Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.

Whatever will happen will happen, but choose your companions with care. Choose them because you like to look at them and you like the sound of their voices, and they have profound secrets in them that you wish to know. In other words, choose them because you love them. Otherwise you will not be able to bear their company for very long.

Because I show you my pain, I do not of necessity love you.

My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful time being myself

Don't let the old story repeat itself now. Arm yourself with all that's happened.

I resolved to move just a little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all times.

For always in her there was a dark place full of despair and a great dividing force to make meaning because there was none.

What if I could give you your life back; pluck out the pain; and give you a world of unimaginable beauty that would be for all time.

A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.

I like mainly to be invisible, to sort of drift around unseen in the world.

Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.

I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.

The atheism and nihilism of my earlier years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky.

You are someone worth loving

I am in love with you', I responded. He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh. 'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.' It was my turn to laugh.

It's so easy to persecute an older, overweight, unwise, crude, ignorant woman who may very well be a good person at heart who has achieved a great deal in her life. So easy to vilify her and hate her and try to destroy her life. Woe to anyone today who is not slender, young, clever and politically correct.

Let the flesh instruct the mind.

I had wanted to say that my song was far too painful to sing.

I don't believe in anything and that makes me stronger than you think

As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood.

I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over any lips, my hands!

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

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.

I am not times fool, nor a god hardened by the millennia; I am not the trickster in the black cape nor the sorrowful wanderer. I have a conscience. I know right from wrong I know what I do and yes, I do it. I am the Vampire Lestat. That's your answer do with it as you will.

Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don’t do it. … Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. … Don’t take any guff off anybody.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.

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.

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.

Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

You sense my loneliness, (...) my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I'm evil, that I don't deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don't stop me, Mother. I'm too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that's all

I don't like myself you know. I love myself. I'm devoted to myself till my dying day. But I don't like myself.

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.

And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.

Don't be a pawn in somebody's game. Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on

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.

Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn.

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.

As if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.

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

Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.

The NRA disgraced itself this morning with a self-serving press event in which they demonized the media and the entertainment industry for gun violence in America, and advocated a national data base for all mentally ill persons. They apparently want armed guards in all American schools, and it seems, armed volunteers as well. Shocking.

My last sunrise. That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise before it.

His Back was turned to the end of the world and the end of the world was quiet.

Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town ---- anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires possess gravitas. They can afford to be merciful.

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.

Being liberated means reading what you want to read, and fantasizing about what you want to fantasize about.

Remember always, he said, that nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this-that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life.

Locked together in hatred. But I can't hate you Louis. Louis my love, I was mortal till you gave me your immortal kiss. You became my mother, and my father, and so I'm yours forever. But now it's time to end it, Louis. Now it's time to leave him.

I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.

I stumble through a carnival of horrors

… in the relentless and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors that won’t open or drawers that won’t shut, struggling over and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.

I had many wonderful experiences, received beautiful letters, and my Christian books received substantive and thoughtful reviews. But there was always argument, dispute, questions as to what I "really" believed, lectures from here and there on "the real truth," etc.

I know Christianity; and I know I have to move away from it and approach Jesus Christ on my own. I have to talk to Him directly and seek His guidance and protection as I seek to make my commitment to Him central to my life.

DO I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ARE BASICALLY GOOD? Yes, I do believe that, and I trust Buddhists and Hindus and Moslems to seek the good and to want to live in peace.

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality.

I think there is a modern temper. The authority figures we revered in the past are all up for grabs - they're gone. We are groping for meaning in a world where some of our gods have died. We're asking ourselves, 'Who is our true brother and sister, where is our true home?' The modern tempter is our struggle to lead meaningful lives, and even if we don't believe in religion, we can reach down and hold on to our core values for guidance.