We shall live even in this state of living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy all who would judge and destroy us.
Anne RiceThere is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
Anne RiceWasn't it his right to listen to opera, read poetry and adventure novels, go to Europe every couple of months for some reason or another, and drive his Porsche over the speed limit until he found out who he was?
Anne RiceIt was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.
Anne RiceDon't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel every particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share."---Forward to Kafka's Short stories
Anne RiceI gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out.
Anne RiceI'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose.
Anne RiceWe have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.
Anne RicePeople write to me all the time to tell me that "homosexuality is an abomination." They base this on a quote in Leviticus. I think the Bible has proved to be a very mysterious and dangerous document.
Anne RiceObsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.
Anne RiceA story of remarkable simplicity and charm. A young swimmer invites us into sea off the coast of California where through her eyes we see an entire realm of creatures we have never known so intimately before. Truly for people of all ages, Lynne Cox's adventure with the baby whale, Grayson, becomes a parable and an experience, thanks not only to the author's great and generous spirit, but through her immense gift for describing nature.
Anne Rice...what was the good of being a movie werewolf? You howled at the moon; you couldn't remember what you did, and then somebody shot you.
Anne RiceMortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing...but Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise.
Anne RiceWho knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
Anne RiceWriters write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.
Anne RiceThe 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 RiceI 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 RiceNo matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
Anne RiceThere's a virtue,' Felix said, 'to listening to a reluctant storyteller. You know that he is in fact diving deep for the salvageable truth.
Anne RiceSo we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.
Anne RiceThe truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.
Anne RiceTo learn and to love, that is what we are here for, any activity which is not grounded in one of these two is a waste of time.
Anne RiceI can't believe the world was created in six days. I do not take Genesis or Revelation literally. I AM OUT. I am alone. I am an outsider for Christ. I will study my Bible, and pray to God in private and alone. I have no other choice.
Anne RiceSomething in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there.
Anne RiceI'm hoping what all sentient beings hope ... that somehow I'm part of something larger than myself, in which I play a role, an actual role that is somehow intended and meaningful.
Anne RiceI don't believe in hell. The idea that a supreme being would make hell is ridiculous. An eternity of pain that results in no learning, reformation or rebirth is a nauseating idea. It's one of the reasons I left Christianity. I simply could not accept that version of God.
Anne RiceIt's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.
Anne RiceIt is tragic that many in America think of us - Christians - as being people who hate others.
Anne RiceOld truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all.
Anne RiceI know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.
Anne RiceYou think I live in the past. You don't understand that I actually change with every era, I always have as best I can
Anne RiceDo 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.
Anne RiceGive me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.
Anne RiceRe-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
Anne RiceSometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
Anne RiceThere are too many other inexplicable things around us--horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you in and then inevitably disenchant you. Back to the predictable and humdrum. The prince is never going to come, everybody knows that; and maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.
Anne RiceThe 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