“I went deeper and deeper in with Lestat’s remains, though why, I did not know. And finally, when I could barely see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I stood there shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy surface. The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging me to go down with him, to descend into the dark water and never come back. It was so distinct and so strong that it made the articulation of voices seem only a murmur by comparison. It spoke without language, saying, ’You know what you must do. Come down into the darkness. Let it all go away.’”
-
Louis de Pointe du Lac - Interview With The Vampire [Anne Rice - 1976]
"
You know what I imagine,“ she said, looking towards me again. "Not so much the murdering of them as an abandon which disregards them completely. I imagine drinking wine until I’m so drunk I strip off my clothes and bathe in the mountain streams naked.”
I almost laughed. But it was a sublime amusement. I looked up at her, uncertain for a moment that I was hearing her correctly. But she had said these words and she wasn’t finished.
“And then I imagine going into the village,” she said, “and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there-crude men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father or your brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one.
"
—Gabrielle de Lioncourt to her son Lestat - The Vampire Lestat (Anne Rice)
"Sometimes fear is a warning. It’s like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther."
—Memnoch - Anne Rice
"And books, they offer one hope — that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved."
"
But why, Lestat?“ he asked a little suspiciously. "Why the danger, the risk? After all, you have done it. You have come back. You’re stronger than ever. You have the old fire as if it had never been lost, and you know how precious this is, this will simply to go on. Why risk it immediately Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves?”
“Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?”
His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.
“I’m not mocking you, Louis,” I said.
“You’ve come back to me, Lestat,” he said evenly, looking at me again. “When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula’s Daughter, I felt something that I thought was gone forever - He paused.
But I knew what he was talking about. He had already said it. And I had understood it centuries ago when I felt Armand’s despair after the death of the old coven. Excitement, the desire to continue, these things were priceless to us. All the more reason for the rock concert, the continuation, the war itself.
"
—Louis and Lestat - (The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice)
