Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters.

I resolved to move just a little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all times.

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.

I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.

I love you still, that's the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I hate you!

In a way he made me think of a child doll, with briliant faintly red-brown glass eyes - a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him evevn more radiant than he was. "That's what you always want," he said softly... "When you found me under Les Innocents," he said, "you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvevt with great embroidered sleeves." "Yes," I said, "and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair." My tone was angry. "You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.

an intoxication with forbidden knowledge in which the natural things become unimportant.