Quotes by Anne Rice

“Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages is it the rule”

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

“So why must it wound him that the most despairing music is full of beauty? Why must it hurt him and make him cynical and sad and untrusting?”

“People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I dont know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”

“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.”

“Life has no meaning any more does it? The wine has no taste, the food sickens you, there seems no reason for any of it, does there? But what if I could give it back to you. Pluck out the pain, and give you another life, one you could never imagine, and it would be for all time. And sickness and death could never touch you again. Dont be afraid, Im going to give you the choice, I, never, had.”

“Her blood coursed through my veins sweeter than life itself. And as it did, Lestats words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed and when I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.”

“To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.”

“I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.”

“Youll sing a song of victory, eternally, though there is none to be had.”

“Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.”

“And I knew my vision of the garden of savage beauty had been a true vision. There was meaning in the world, yes, and laws, and inevitability, but they had only to do with the aesthetic and in this Savage Garden, these innocent ones belonged in the vampires arms. A thousand other things can be said about the world, but only aesthetic principles can be verified, and these things alone remain the same.”

“To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds . . .”

“But at that moment I heard Claudias voice. She was calling my name. I turned, and, through the tangled vines I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint luminescent shell road. [concerning the way claudia looked]”

“In spite of all the refinements of society that conspired to make art – the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard’s canvases – beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.”

“So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here...in my arms.”

“I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.”

“I want to know, for example, why beauty exists, she said, why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough.”

“When youre watching TV and theyre reporting 50 people dead in Mississippi and you havent heard from your family, well, you think the worst.”