Anne Rice Lestat Quotes & Sayings

Maybe we do go home, finally. — Anne Rice

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.
- Lestat, The Vampire Lestat, p. 532 — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

Carefully I opened my eyes and looked at him again. All his natural gifts were there in a blaze of light: the delicate but strong limbs, large sober brown eyes, and his mouth that for all the irony and sarcasm that could come out of it was childlike and ready to be kissed. — Anne Rice

If you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking again, that he is frightened, that he is searching desperately for the lesson and for the song and for the raison d'etre, that he wants to understand his own story and he wants you to understand it, and that it is the very best story he has right now to tell. If that's not enough, read something else.
If it is, read on. In chains, to my friend and my scribe, I dictated these words.
Come with me. Just listen to me. Don't leave me alone. — Anne Rice

Finally those you love are simply ... those you love. — Anne Rice

That passivity in me has been the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid morality, that awful pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I let Claudia become the vampire she became, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I stood by and let her kill Lestat, when I knew that was wrong, the very thing that was her undoing. I lifted not a finger to prevent it. And Madeleine, Madeleine, I let her come to that, when I should never have made her a creature like ourselves. I knew that was wrong! Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that has spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified victim. It's over! — Anne Rice

I am the Vampire Lestat, and nothing ... not even this mortal body ... is going to defeat me. — Anne Rice

Lestat: You're very anxious to be out of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand.
David: You're serious?
Lestat: Of course
David: You do realize, that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a ... a most impressive piece of young male flesh.
Lestat: I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to..
David: You've been with a woman, haven't you?
Lestat: I wish you hadn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?
David: A woman you loved.
Lestat: I have always loved both men and women.
David: That's a slightly different use of the word 'love. — Anne Rice

Pamper the mad man. — Anne Rice

Kindly go to Hell!
(Lestat to Oncle Julien's ghost) — Anne Rice

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

I had to have him, had to. Just the way I had to have everything I wanted; or had to do everything I'd ever wanted to do. — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity must wait. — Anne Rice

Save your kisses for the world, little one.
- Magnus to Lestat before going into the fire. — Anne Rice

Drink from me and live forever.
Lestat de Lioncourt — Anne Rice

As we move on year by year in this life, we learn that telling doesn't necessarily purge; telling something is merely a reliving, and it's a torment. — Anne Rice

But you love books, then," Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen.
"Oh, yes," Lestat said. "Sometimes they are the only thing that keeps me alive."
"What a strange thing to say at your age," she laughed.
"No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope - - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved. — Anne Rice

Maybe I'll obey the rules. Some of them, anyway, who knows? What are you going to do if I don't, by the way, and haven't I asked you this before? — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else for very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did not sail my little craft steadily over the surface, towards a sun which will never rise. — Anne Rice

Was this what he believed, what he had always believed when I talked on and on about goodness? Was he making the violin say it? Was he deliberately creating those long, pure liquid notes to say that beauty meant nothing because it came from the dispair inside him, and it had nothing to do with the desair finally, because the despair wasn't beautiful, and a beauty then was a horrid irony? — Anne Rice

You're the hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your tragedy. — Anne Rice

Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling. — Anne Rice

In a way, he made me think of a doll, with brilliant 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 wanted," he said softly. His tone was melancholy. "When you found me under Les Innocents, you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet."
"You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to emgrace and good to love." My tone was angry. We eyed each other for a moment. And then he surpised me, rising and coming towards me just as I moved to take him in my arms. His gesture wasn't tentative, but it was extremely gentle. We held each other tight for a moment. The cold embracing the cold. "I can't remember anything sad bweween us, " I said.
"You will," he responded. "And so will I. But what does it matter what we remember?"
"Yes," I said. "We're both still here. — Anne Rice

Claudia, you've been a very very naughty little girl. — Anne Rice

I kept glancing at him and away from him, as if his green eyes were hurting me. In modern parlance he was a laser beam. Deadly and delicate he seemed. His victims had always loved him.
And I had always loved him, hadn't I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?
-Lestat — Anne Rice

Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely. — Anne Rice

You have to pass away from what failed you into what can sustain you. Otherwise - there is no hope. — Anne Rice

Darkness had been essentially banished from the Earth. It had become a choice. — Anne Rice

Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell. — Anne Rice

A real devil among devils. — Anne Rice

I can't help being a gorgeous fiend. It's just the card I drew. — Anne Rice

What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered yellow hair — Anne Rice

I was particularly stunned by the casting of [Tom] Cruise, who is no more my Vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler. — Anne Rice

Information age. I guess I'm part of it, even if I can't remember how to use my iPhone from week to week, and have to learn how to send e-mails all over again every couple of years, and can't retain any profound technological knowledge about the computers I sometimes use. — Anne Rice

I am the Vampire Lestat. I'm immortal more or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not. — Anne Rice

We are the things that others fear," I said. "Remember that. — Anne Rice

The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her. — Anne Rice

I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me.
'Let's go to bed,' he said softly. — Anne Rice

The Coven of the Articulate - A modern slang term popular among the Undead for the vampires whose stories appear in the Vampire Chronicles - particularly Louis, Lestat, Pandora, Marius, and Armand. — Anne Rice

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love. — Anne Rice

My father who art in hell, Lestat be your name. — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

A dreadful suspicion was coming over me. Hadn't my mortal life been nothing but abysmal struggle and trivia and fear? Wasn't that the way it was for most mortals? Wasn't that the message of a score of modern writers and poets - that we wasted our lives in foolish preoccupation? Wasn't this all a miserable cliche? — Anne Rice

One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world. — Anne Rice

Never in all this time since you first came to me, never once have I ever looked into your eyes or heard your voice, or even thought of you, without feeling pain. It's the pain connected to loving you ,to realizing my limits, and what I'll never have. Do you remmeber feeling my heartbeat? You'll never feel such a rhythm as you will with me. I'm your Savage Garden, and yet so tame and soft and safe! — Anne Rice

And this notion of the meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us.
I took up the theme again that music and acting were good because they drove back chaos. Chaos was the meaninglessness of day-to-day life, and if we were to die now, our lives would have been nothing but meaninglessness. — Anne Rice

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 — Anne Rice

History is a litany of injustice, no one denies it. But when has a simple solution ever been anything but evil? Only in complexity do we find answers. Through complexity men struggle towards fairness; it is slow and clumsy, but it's the only way. Simplicity demands too great a sacrifice. It always has. - Lestat — Anne Rice

Don't go," he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath away. But I was already going. I barely heard him call out to me: "I need you. You're the only friend I have." How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was too late now for that. And besides, I think he knew. All life seemed utterly unbearable to me now. — Anne Rice

The trip back from Pointe du Lac was thrilling. And the constant chatter of Lestat was positively the most boring and disheartening thing I experienced. Of course as I said, I was far from being his equal. — Anne Rice

In these last few days, we were close because we were both mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that's all changed. You have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I still see death when I look at you. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mine — Anne Rice

If I haven't put that on a T-shirt, I'm going to. Actually, I really don't want to write anything that can't be put on a T-shirt. Actually I'd like to write only on T-shirts. Actually, I'd like to write whole novels on T-shirts. So you guys could say, 'I'm wearing chapter 8 of Lestat's new book, that's my favorite; oh I see you're wearing chapter 6- — Anne Rice

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

All the old poetry makes sense when you look at one whom you have loved. — Anne Rice

I'm a little sadder for all of it, and a little meaner and a little more conscientious as well. — Anne Rice

And you are with us and one of us, and we are the people of the moon and the stars. — Anne Rice

Despair is so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannekin in the window. It could be dispelled by the lights surrounding a tower. It would be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick's coming into view. And then despair would come again. Meaningless, I almost said, aloud. — Anne Rice

The truth is, I hate not being the first person narrator all the way through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I don't know whether I'm the hero or the victim of this tale. But either way, shouldn't I dominate it? — Anne Rice

I'd thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she'd surpassed all the language I had for it. — Anne Rice

I stumble through a carnival of horrors — Anne Rice

One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out ... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone! — Anne Rice

It has its dark splendor, to walk the nightmare terrain forever. — Anne Rice

My soul was bruised and sore. For the first time ever in my life, I was agraid of what would happen. I was afraid that he was going to destroy me, and I simply could not do again what I'd just done. I could not be part of this design. I prayed I coudn't be made to do it, that I would have the strength to refuse. I felt his hands on my shoulders. "Turn and look at me," he said. And there it was again, the most seductive beauty I'd ever beheld. 'I am yours, my love. You are my only true companion.' But I couldn't speak these words to him. — Anne Rice

But what endures is what has always mattered: love - that we love one another as surely as we are alive. And if there is any hope for us to ever really be good - that hope will be realized through love. — Anne Rice

You're the mad one,' I said. 'If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music - which of course you play for yourself - you wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your own. Sombre, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns. — Anne Rice

Lestat, what did I say last night?' he asked. 'You are the damnedest creature! — Anne Rice

I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and musicians-they're saints to me. — Anne Rice

There was no time in Lestat's plan for anything but his plan. — Anne Rice

The waiter had set down the hot drinks, and the steam did feel glorious. The piano played Satie ever so softly. Life was almost worth living, even for a son of a bitch of a monster like myself. — Anne Rice

I don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is. — Anne Rice

You are the pure embodiment of madness. — Anne Rice

Lestat: I despise you! I ought to destroy you-finish what I started when I made you. Turn you into ashes and sift them through my hands. You know that I could do it! Like that! Like the snap of mortal fingers, I could do it. Burn you as I burnt your little house. And nothing could save you, nothing at all. — Anne Rice

You have to suffer through this emptiness ... and find what impels you to continue. — Anne Rice

She said further that this Geneva blood drinker was tragically in love with Lestat. — Anne Rice

The night was waiting for me as always. And my thirst could wait no longer. I stood for a moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, and mouth open, feeling that thirst, and wanting to roar like a hungry beast. Yes, blood again when there is nothing else. When the world seems in all its beauty to be empty and heartless and I myself am utterly lost. Give me my old friend, death, and the blood that rushes with it. The Vampire Lestat is here, and he thirsts, and tonight of all nights, he will not be denied. — Anne Rice

In a daze, I saw him stretch out his arms to me. It struck me that never in all my life had I beheld anyone quite as beautiful as he was, and it was not merely the sum of his physical attributes, it was the pure serenity, the essence that I perceived with my innermost soul. A lovely euphoria came over me as he spoke. — Anne Rice

Here's my love, not in little droplets, but from the very river of my being. It reaches all the way down to the roots of my being, tangling my heart in its burning mesh. For you. Drink deep. — Anne Rice

Malady of mortality — Anne Rice

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 — Anne Rice

Lestat might be the hero of the Vampire Chronicles, but this one, Louis, was the tragic heart. Yet he seemed at long last to have achieved a kind of peace with the ghastly realities of his existence and the existence of all those around him who outranked him in power but not necessarily in insight or wisdom. — Anne Rice

I wanted to kiss her, she was beautiful again to me. But I dared not risk it. It wasn't only that I would have frightened her, it was that the desire to kill her was almost overpowering. Some fierce purely male instinct in me wanted to claim her now simply because I had claimed her in another way before. — Anne Rice

You're a perfect devil, Lestat!" "That's what you are! You are the devil himself! — Anne Rice

To be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost."
So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions."
An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes. — Anne Rice

And there were moments in this fetid little paradise when I prayed that in spite of everything I was capable of, I was somehow kin to every mortal. Maybe I was not the exotic outcast that I imagined, but merely the dim magnification of every human soul. 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. And weary finally of this complexity, we dream of that long-ago time when each kiss was the pefect consummation of desire. What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and agian. — Anne Rice

I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water. — Anne Rice

In fiction if nowhere else, I must have a little meaning, a little coherence, or I will go mad. — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

Lestat, you are the damnedest creature!' he whispered under his breath. 'You are a brat prince. — Anne Rice

My conscience is killing me, isn't it? And when you're immortal that can be a really long and ignominious death — Anne Rice

I loved Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat'. I found a copy of 'Interview' when I was in seventh grade at a garage sale for 25 cents. It had a crazy cover. — Holly Black

The sky was growing dangerously light when I left Lestat and made my way to the secret place, below an abandoned building where I kept the iron coffin in which I lie.
This is no unusual configuration among our kind-the sad old building, my title to it, or the cellar room cut off from the world above by iron doors no mortal could independently seek to lift. — Anne Rice

An alien calm crept slowly over me. It was dark, full of bitterness and growing fascination. — Anne Rice

He stood in the doorway, holding the back of his own arms. And I knew what I felt. It was a monstrous intimacy with another being, an intimacy that made even the rapt moments of life seem dim and under control. Never, never in all my existance had I been threateened with an intimacy quite like this. — Anne Rice

You have a light in you that's almost blinding. But in me there's only darkness. Sometimes I think it's like the darkness that infected you that night in the inn when you began to cry and to tremble. You were so helpless, so unprepared for it. I try to keep the darkness from you because I need your light. I need it desperately, but you don't need the darkness. — Anne Rice

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. — Anne Rice

In the Savage Garden you shine beautifully, my friend. You walk as if it is your garden to do with as you please. And in my wanderings, I always return to you. I always return to see the colours of the garden in your shadow, or reflected in your eyes, perhaps, or to hear of your latest follies and mad obsessions. — Anne Rice

Yet I saw crypts when I looked at him, and I heard the beat of kettledrums. I saw torchlit fields where I had never been, heard vague incantations, felt the heat of raging fires on my face. And they didn't come out of him, these visions. Rather I drew them out on my own.
Yet I never had Nicolas, mortal or immortal, been so alluring. Never had Gabrielle held me so in thrall.
Dear God, this is love. This is desire. And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this.
- Lestat de Lioncourt — Anne Rice