You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.
Anne RiceWe are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?
Anne RiceCome on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good!
Anne RiceTo 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 RiceTruth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.
Anne RiceI picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning...rather than one great dull answer to all our questions
Anne RiceThe library furnished our dreams, helped us shape our ambitions, made up people of books and ideas and grand designs.
Anne RiceBecause," she said, "that is what men would call it. They invented Satan, didn't they? Satanic is merely the name they give to the behavior of those who would disrupt the orderly way in which men want to live.
Anne RiceWe’re going to die and not even know. We’ll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won’t any longer be witnesses to it. We won’t have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We’ll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!
Anne RiceIt was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.
Anne RiceIn the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
Anne RiceI love the world the Lord has created; I love the mountains, the rivers, the valleys, the skies. I love the forests, the fields, the flowers. I love the mysteries of evolution and dna and the big bang. I want to know the majesties of the Lord's Creation. I cannot close my eyes to all this. I cannot turn away from science and scientific exploration.
Anne RiceMy faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.
Anne RiceI 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 RiceI have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.-Marius
Anne RiceI tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil -- religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the elegant abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively to its knees.
Anne RiceWe need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.
Anne RiceAs if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
Anne Riceas they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.
Anne RiceWhen we talk about our lives, long or short, brief and tragic or enduring beyond comprehension, we impose a continuity on them, and that continuity is a lie.
Anne RiceHe was so excited by this little bit of intelligence that he might have gone off, perplexed, pondering for a long time. It was like reading a wonderful sentence in a book, and not being able to continue because so many possibilities were crowding his mind.
Anne RicePerhaps I fear him because I could love him again, and in loving him, I would come to need him, and in needing him, I would again be his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for me is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in his eyes.
Anne RiceTo really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
Anne RiceAll my life,I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid.
Anne RiceYou make me miserable. You really do, I want you to know that. Much as I love you, much as I need you, much as I can't exist without you, you make me miserable.
Anne RiceIt is very disturbing to see people use Christianity and the Bible to support a certain political agenda, especially when one cannot connect that agenda with the authentic teachings of Christ.
Anne RiceIt was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.
Anne RiceSo until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here...in my arms.
Anne RiceAh, 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 RiceFirst-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.
Anne RiceAnd then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.
Anne RiceI 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 RiceAnd this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on.
Anne Rice