The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1)

by Anne Rice

Fear of ignorance, fear of violence, fear of humiliation drove him as surely as his later ambitions.

as 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.

How curious it is that these religious people believe the devil to be so stupid that he should seek to corrupt only the poor and powerless—why not the king of France for once?—and the population at large to be so weak.

give 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 dangerous enemy indeed.

‘Some people don’t like living,’ he said to me. Wasn’t that strange? ‘They just can’t stand life. They treat it like it’s a terrible disease.’

“Life itself must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies.