Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)

by Anne Rice

‘Don’t be afraid. Just start the tape.’

The entire country of France was under the influence of the devil, and the Revolution had been his greatest triumph.

My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the open door through which Lestat had come on both the first and second occasion.

they were all men

homosexuality

His voice grated on me.

Do you understand me when I say I did not wish to rush headlong into experience, that what I’d felt as a vampire was far too powerful to be wasted?’ ‘Yes,’ said the boy eagerly. ‘It sounds as if it was like being in love.’

He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man made of dried twigs with a thin, carping voice.

Gag him

And now picture Lestat, gnashing his teeth like a comic-opera devil because he was not going to kill the young Freniere.’

“Why should I? I’ve cared for him all these years. Isn’t that enough?” And he drew from his pocket a nail file, and, seating himself on the foot of the old man’s bed, he began to file his long nails.

I am like a mother … I want a child!”

“She’s there!” he said. “Your wounded one. Your daughter.”

He thought Lestat was the father.

She had a voice equal to her physical beauty, clear like a little silver bell. It was sensual. She was sensual.

And though Lestat still threatened me with danger to her, he did not threaten her at all but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach her that we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die.

‘All this Claudia found wondrous, with the quiet awe of an unspoiled child, and marvelled when Lestat hired a painter to make the walls of her room a magical forest of unicorns and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams.

‘But when that was done, she was my companion, my pupil, her long hours spent with me consuming faster and faster the knowledge I gave her, sharing with me some quiet understanding which could not include Lestat.

Often father and daughter look down on mother together

Father and Daughter. Lover and Lover.

“She’ll be all right,” I assured him, though I was estranged from her and in agony, as if she’d been my bride.

“Kill with me tonight,” she whispered as sensuously as a lover.

thats ur child louis

“Read your damn poems, then! Rot!”

could see that he would be able to go on like this until dawn. He was exhilarated. I watched him flip through the music, thinking, Can he die? Can he actually die?

this horror that had been Lestat,

I wanted to forget him, and yet it seemed I thought of him always. It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him.

We must bypass Vienna. We need our language, our people. I want to go directly now to Paris.” ’

“A beautiful child,” she said glancing up at me. “Is that what you still think I am?”

“Why do you look away, why don’t you look at me?” she asked, her voice very smooth, very like a silver bell. But then she laughed softly, a woman’s laugh, and said, “Did you think I’d be your daughter forever? Are you the father of fools, the fool of fathers?”

“Trickster!” I said sharply. “Buffoon!” ‘That word stopped him. Died on his lips even as he was saying it, and his face went hard.

hello santiago

“Bring the petite beauty with you. You are most welcome. Armand.”

GET AWAY FROM HER

Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?”

“It is the crime that means death to any vampire anywhere who commits it. It is to kill your own kind!” ‘ “Aaaaah!” Claudia cried out, and lapsed into peals of laughter.

she dont gaf

“You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned to you….” ‘ “Never …” I said to her. ‘ “You would leave me, and he wants you as you want him. He’s been waiting for you….”

‘I shook my head, and yet in my monstrous heart I felt a surge of excitement.

father of the year

‘And there they were together, a tender mortal crying unstintingly now, her warm arms holding what she could not possibly understand, this white and fierce and unnatural childthing she believed she loved.

‘And after a long interval he said, “I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.”

“A love so strong he couldn’t allow me to grow old and die.

“No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this?”

LMFAO

Claudia’s yellow dress. His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away. And the soft, subdued sobs broke from him as he sat back while I stared at him, while I stared at the dress.

But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.

“I could not prevent it, I could not prevent it …”

pants are blazing

Lestat, in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn’t wished to confide in anyone, feelings I’d wished to forget, despite Claudia’s death. Hatred had not been one of them.

you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you

And Lestat, clutching his bathrobe to his throat, rose from the chair.

diva

She never loved you, you know. Not in the way that I loved you,