"When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough."

"I'll write about my past but I won't talk about it. I'll turn it into art if I can, but I won't talk about it."

"The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us."

"I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love."

"Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups."

"Maybe I'll obey the rules. Some of them, anyway, who knows? What are you going to do if I don't, by the way, and haven't I asked you this before?"

"It was as if I had only just been able to see colours and shapes for the first time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long time."

"And this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on."

"All my life,I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid."

"Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books."

"And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved."

"The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets."

"I am such a bad girl," she thought. Yet..."

"It seemed at moments, when I sat alone in the dark stateroom, that the sky had come down the meet the sea and some great secret was to be revealed."

"We were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense. We always tried to stretch out that moment, and then inevitably one of us would confess, "I can't follow anymore, I think the Golden Moment's passed."

"I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul."

"Everyone today has a story, the world's an archive."

"I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here."

"Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms."

"Dickens is a very underrated writer at the moment. Everyone in his time admired him but I think right now he's not spoken of enough."

"I don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is."

"I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it."

"Ah, what broken creatures we are, and how we endure."

"Lasher,' she said, 'for the wind which you send that lashes the grasslands, for the wind that lashes the leaves from the trees."

"And oh, how she pitched herself into things. She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing. Then it was embroidery with her, she had to learn it, and she'd make the most beautiful thing, fussing at herself for the least little mistake, then throw down the needles and be done with that forevermore. I never saw a child so changeable. It was as though she was looking for something to which she could give herself, and she never found it. Least ways not while she was a little girl."

"Lestat: Toughen up baby. I'm looking for the eternal scum."

"First time my master's in English literature ever proved useful."

"Consequently, if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan's power comes from God and so that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really."

"But I lived a lie. I lived it out of anger. This is what I am trying to tell you. I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger and I cannot admit the irrationality of love. Oh the lies I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know."

"The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught."

"Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty."

"I do want to go another way - to write something completely different."

"Should we put out the light? And then put out the light. But once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital breath again. It needs must wither."

"And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have."

"Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies."

"What I did was take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and sought to make Him utterly believable, a vital breathing character."

"It 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."

"I am in love with you', I responded.He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh.'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.'It was my turn to laugh."

"I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?"

"I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side."

"God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are none so like him as ourselves."

"No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate, he said frankly. "And books, they offer hope - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe one is saved."

"Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?"

"The music as always had a dark sweet luster, but it was more than ever like an endless beginning-a theme ever building to a climax which would never come."

"I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others-all our kind who know of her-they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach..."

"It was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world...on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves."

"Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven't tears enough for what you've done to me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight. I might have had that shape!' Her pointed finger flew at Madeleine, whose hands had risen to her face, whose eyes were clouded over. Her moan was almost Claudia's name. But Claudia did not hear her. 'Yes, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your side."

"Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven."

"I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out."

"I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that."