Vittorio, The Vampire

We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.

That’s the case with most vampires, no matter who says otherwise. Beauty carries us to our doom. Or, to put it more accurately, we are made immortal by those who cannot sever themselves from our charms.

I wouldn't write a book to tell you that a vampire was happy.

The sun shocked me, and made me sicken, yet how I wanted it, how I longed for it, and yet it rebuked me and seemed to scourge me as if it were a whip.

What am I? Do I live? Or am I walking always in death, forever in love with time?

Let Mastema say," said Ramiel. "Go back to Heaven!" said Setheus. "Please, the both of you, be quiet," said Mastema.

Behold, I tell you, the light is there in you I see it. I see it in each and every one of us, and will always. I see it when I hunger, when I struggle, when I slaughter. I see it sputter and die in my arms when I drink. Can you imagine what it would be like for me to kill you? Pray it never takes a slaughter or a rape for you to see this light in those around you. God forbid it that it should demand such a price. Let me pay the price for you instead.

I delve in all, and blend without prejudice, and that some higher good pertains to what I do, I cannot doubt.

You squirm on the end of a hook, you’re a doomed catch from the sea, and you do not even know that you are no longer in the life-sustaining water.

How steady yet pulsing was this orgy of fierce light!

Revenge is a lure, a mighty molten lure, even if it is hopeless!

I saw in him a species of fear as real as that which I had seen in the young forest, but it was even more innocent for all his age, and all his wrinkles, and the wetness of his lips with the wine. He looked fatigued by that which he couldn’t comprehend.

I had never seen anything as beautiful as this painting, with its immense crowd of still attentive faces, its splendid collection of angels and saints, its lithe and graceful feline women and willowy celestial men. I went crazy for it.

Beauty carries us to our doom. Or, to put it more accurately, we are made by immortal by those who cannot sever themselves from our charms.

I know nothing of those heroes of macabre facts masquerading as fiction.

They have been buried, nameless, beneath five centuries of time.

It is a vision of every human being, bursting with fire and with mystery, a vision I cannot deny, nor blot out, nor ever turn away from, nor ever belittle nor ever escape.

I knew that things human would lose all love of this place, as they had lost their love of so many ruins in the country round.

It wasn’t so like the dream, but then again it was, because these things were above and full of the verdant smell of the wild, and the sylvan woods were gently heaving their limbs on the scented wind.

Do I live? Or am I walking always in death, forever in love with time?

It was a drunken labyrinth of a garden gone wild under the naked night.

This darkness had a calming effect on me. The open country sank into a deep dark tinge of blue beneath the pearly heavens, and I could see the forests encroaching on the tilled land, creeping higher here and there, as the hills folded over one another or sank steeply into valleys of pure blackness.

And won’t you take absolution from me, Vittorio!” he said. His voice rose, and his chest seemed to increase in size. “Vittorio and Ursula, take my absolution.” “No, Father,” I said. “we cannot take it. We don’t want it.” “But why?” “Because, Father,” said Ursula kindly, “we plan to sin again as soon as we possibly can.