Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To learn and to love, that is what we are here for, any activity which is not grounded in one of these two is a waste of time.
The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.
We would make our heroes shallow.... We would make them brittle. It is they who must remind us of the true meaning of strength.
Aren't there gradations of evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth?
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.
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.
My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance.
Say what you will to the force that governs the universe. Perhaps we'll call it into being, and it will yet love us as we love it.
Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.
Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.
Dickens is a very underrated writer at the moment. Everyone in his time admired him but I think right now he's not spoken of enough.
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.
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
Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort.
There's no way to cheat a sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.
A singer can shatter glass with the proper high note," he said, "but the simplest way to break glass is simply to drop it on the floor.
...what was the good of being a movie werewolf? You howled at the moon; you couldn't remember what you did, and then somebody shot you.
Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.
I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.
God, what is it like to be You and hear all those people all the time everywhere, begging, imploring, calling out for anything and anyone?
We need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.
Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.
There's a virtue,' Felix said, 'to listening to a reluctant storyteller. You know that he is in fact diving deep for the salvageable truth.
But all morality is of necessity shaped by context. I'm not talking relativism, no. To ignore the context of a decision is in fact immoral.
You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.
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.
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
I no longer represent any organized religion. I'm not Catholic. I'm not Christian. I'm saying this because I have to be an outsider for Christ.
Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all.
Should we put out the light? And then put out the light. But once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital breath again. It needs must wither.
There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.
I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it.
Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.
I want to love all the children of God - Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist - everyone. I want to love gay Christians and straight Christians.
Vampires always order hot drinks. They aren't going to drink them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and that is so good.
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
It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.
For several long moments we remained locked together, and I think I covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her perfume crucifying me with memories.
Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!
That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.
The evil of one murder is infinite, and my guilt is like my beauty - eternal. I cannot be forgiven, for there is no one to forgive me for all I've done.
It's not so," I said. "And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?
Handsome enough' is this Grim Reaper, Who can snuff all these 'brief candles,' every fluttering soul sucking the air, from this hall" -The Vampire Lestat
when we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true deisres-What we WOULD have when that which we DO have so sorely disappoints us
You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.
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.
When we talk about our lives, long or short, brief and tragic or enduring beyond comprehension, we impose a continuity on them, and that continuity is a lie.
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
….it was a brave man’s fear. I knew what he meant. What must a brave general feel when he knows the battle has gone against him and nothing remains but death?