Anne Rice

One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!

It was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into 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.

Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling.

The human heart is my school.

I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and musicians-they're saints to me.

And this notion of the meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us.I took up the theme again that music and acting were good because they drove back chaos. Chaos was the meaninglessness of day-to-day life, and if we were to die now, our lives would have been nothing but meaninglessness.

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.

And this time as the lashes come, try to think about the pain, instead of against it, because there is not one single aspect of life, past, present, or future, that does not tear your reason from you, to think on it. So think about the pain. This pain after all has its limits. You can chart its passage through your body. It has a beginning, middle, end. Imagine if it had a color. The first cut of the lash is what, red? Red, spreading into a brilliant yellow. And this one again, red, red, no yellow, and then white, white, white, white. . .Why have you incarcerated yourself in this palazzo of torture chambers, why do you not leave this place? Because you are a monster and this is a school for monsters, and if you leave here, then you will be completely, completely alone! Alone with this!Don't weep in front of these strangers. Swallow it down. Don't weep in front of these strangers! Cry to heaven, cry to heaven, cry to heaven.

And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.

If you really want peace in any world you have to learn to say nothing.

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me best to another.

It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.

As if the night had said to me, __ou are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms_ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.

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.

Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing.

Who said you had to be human to have a soul? Everything that is self-conscious and capable of thought and love has a soul. The soul emanates from self-conscious. The soul is the expression of self-consciousness. The soul is generated by organized self-consciousness.

Your soul is your inner being, your thinking, reasoning, loving, choosing inner being. Your capacity to stand up for what is right. Your capacity to fight against what is wrong. Your capacity to choose even to die for what you believe is right. That's your soul.

The finest thing under the sun and moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or despair. I marvel at human endurance.