“Believe in angels? Then believe in vampires. Believe in me. There are worse things on earth.”
“Sometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.”
“Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.”
“Maybe this is madness. Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up.”
“You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.”
“God, why didn't you make us all dogs?”
“-You are on the verge of being truly mad.
-No, not at all. Look at me. I can tie my shoelaces. See?”
“How could anyone love Him? What did you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's that everybody hates Him! At least I think so.”
“Oh, but when love is reached through suffering, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.”
“I saw the Light,saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round and widening as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place-Lestat”
“I tucked my arm under my head and started crying like a child. I was perishing from exhaustion. I was worn and miserable and I loved crying. I couldn’t do anything else. I gave in to it fully. I felt that profound release of the utterly grief-stricken. I didn’t give a damn who saw or heard. I cried and cried.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Yes, something about the fabric of life ripping for a moment so you glimpsed things you shouldn’t have seen.”
“You understand the fundamental principle of an icon, don’t you? “Inspired by God”
“Not made by hands” “Supposedly directly imprinted upon the background material by God Himself”
All Icons fundamentally were the work of God. A revelation in material form. And sometimes new icon could be made from another simply by pressing a new cloth to the original and a magic transfer would occur.”
“We have souls, you and I. We want to know things; we share the same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We don't either of us know what it means to die, no matter what we might say to the contrary.”
“He bent close to me, and suddenly kissed me, in a manner that seemed entirely childlike and also a bit European.”
“I was too miserable to take much consolation just from feeling good for a moment in a welter of shudders and salted, bloodstained tears.”
“I crossed the street. The snow felt rather good, but then I’m a monster.”
“He seemed even younger now, as though he were traveling backwards in time, in his mind, or merely becoming innocent, as if the dead, if they are going to stick around, have a right to remember their innocence.”
“I’m that bad, am I?” I whispered, lips trembling. I was going to bawl again. “In all the world, with all the things humans have done, all the unspeakable horrors men have visited on other men, the unthinkable suffering of women and children worldwide at the hands of mankind, and I’m that bad!”
“We are never entirely sure about each other’s powers. It’s all a game. I would no more have asked him how he got here, or in what manner, than I would ask a mortal man how precisely he made love to his wife.”
“My hands were…my strange white, slender, glittering hands.”
“Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this story.”
“Because if this being doesn’t exist inside my head, if he exists outside, then he can get you too.” This made him very obviously thoughtful and distant and then he said strange words to me I didn’t expect. “But he doesn’t want me, does he? And he doesn’t want the others, either. He wants you.” I was crestfallen. I am proud, I am an egomaniac of a being; I do love attention; I want glory; I want to be wanted by God and the Devil. I want, I want, I want, I want.”
“It will be under the name David Talbot.” “My clothes. There’s a stash of them here under the name Isaac Rummel. Just a suitcase or two, and some coats. It’s really winter, isn’t it?” I gave him the key to the room. This was humiliating. Rather like making a servant of him. Perhaps he’d change his mind and put our new lodgings under the name of Renfield.”
“Infantry. That stuff matters over there.”
“She was Remade she was (Remade scum), he knew it, he saw it, and still he felt incessantly what was inside him, and he felt a great scab of habit and prejudice split from him, part from his skin where his homeland had inscribed him deep. [...]There was a caustic pain as he peeled off a clot of old life and exposed himself open and unsure to her, to new air. [...] His feelings welled out and bled together (their festering ceased) and they began to resolve, to heal in a new form, to scar.”
“When was the last time we talked? Before we moved? Even now, when we had time to talk, he walked off to make phone calls. I thought I should be disappointed or sad but I wasn’t. I was empty. Strangers in a strange family.”
“He shrugged, and for a second they stood there, sizing each other up, the moment stretching, the gaze growing uncomfortable until his gray eyes finally broke free, escaping to the ground. Kate smiled, victorious. She gestured to the patch of pavement, the border of grass. “What brings you to my office?”
He looked around, confused, as if he’d actually intruded. Then he looked up and said, “The view.”
Kate flashed a crooked grin. “Oh really?”
His face went red. “I didn’t mean you,” he said quickly. “I was talking about the trees.”
“Wow,” she said dryly. “Thanks. How am I supposed to compete with pine and oak?”
“I don’t know,” said Freddie, cocking his head. Stray dog again. “They’re pretty great.”
“The Revolution put an end to prostitution by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own. (1983: 61)”
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