“Akasha, for two thousand years I have watched,' he said. 'Call me the Roman in the Arena if you will and tell me tales of the ages that went before. When I knelt at your feet I begged you for your knowledge. But what I have witnessed in this short span has filled me with awe and love for all things mortal; I have seen revolutions in thought and philosophy which I believed impossible. Is not the human race moving towards the very age of peace you describe?' Her face was a picture of disdain. 'Marius,' she said, 'this will go down as one of the bloodiest centuries in the history of the human race. What revolutions do you speak of, when millions have been exterminated by one small European nation on the whim of a madman, when entire cities were melted into oblivion by bombs? When children in desert countries of the East war on other children in the name of an ancient and despotic God? Marius, women the world over wash the fruits of their wombs down public drains. The screams of the hungry are deafening, yet unheard by the rich who cavort in technological citadels; disease runs rampant among the starving of whole continents while the sick in palatial hospitals spend the wealth of the world on cosmetics refinements and the promise of eternal life through pills and vials." She laughed softly. 'Did ever the cries of the dying ring so thickly in the ears of those of us who can hear them? Has ever more blood been shed?”

“Akasha, for two thousand years I have watched,' he said. 'Call me the Roman in the Arena if you will and tell me tales of the ages that went before. When I knelt at your feet I begged you for your knowledge. But what I have witnessed in this short span has filled me with awe and love for all things mortal; I have seen revolutions in thought and philosophy which I believed impossible. Is not the human race moving towards the very age of peace you describe?' Her face was a picture of disdain. 'Marius,' she said, 'this will go down as one of the bloodiest centuries in the history of the human race. What revolutions do you speak of, when millions have been exterminated by one small European nation on the whim of a madman, when entire cities were melted into oblivion by bombs? When children in desert countries of the East war on other children in the name of an ancient and despotic God? Marius, women the world over wash the fruits of their wombs down public drains. The screams of the hungry are deafening, yet unheard by the rich who cavort in technological citadels; disease runs rampant among the starving of whole continents while the sick in palatial hospitals spend the wealth of the world on cosmetics refinements and the promise of eternal life through pills and vials." She laughed softly. 'Did ever the cries of the dying ring so thickly in the ears of those of us who can hear them? Has ever more blood been shed?”

“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.”

“I 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.”

“I would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not love me!" -Claudia.”

“What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which gave its wintry glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I remembered no one who had ever lived and breathed within my quietly moving form~ The Vampire Armand”

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

“Resignation requires will, and will requires decision, and decision requires belief, and belief requires that there is something to believe in!”

“You let me handle Marius," I said. "Now, you didn't come without you dagger.""No, I did not," he said, lifting his cloak to reveal it, "And with your permission I would like to plunge it through my heart now so I will most assuredly stone-cold dead before the Master of this house arrives home to find you runnning rampant in his garden!""Permission denied.”

“For what can the damned really have to say to the damned?”

“After all, these were blood drinkers, beings who spoke gently, liked poetry, and yet killed mortals all the time.”

“I watched him rise from the coffin, with slow, elegant gestures; our gestures, for we are the only beings who routinely rise from coffins.”