Anne Rice

He__l take from your mind the answer best suited to lead you on, to enthrall you. He__l weave a web of deceits so thick you won__ see the world through it. He wants your strength and he__l say what he must say to get it. Break the chain, child! You__e the strongest of them all! Break the chain and he__l go backto hell for he has no other place to go in all the wide world to find strength like yours. Don__ you see?He__ created it. Bred sister to brother, and uncle to niece, and son to mother, yes, that too, when he hadto do it, to make an ever more powerful witch, only faltering now and then, and gaining what he lost in one generation by even greater strength in the next. What was the cost of Antha and Deirdre if he could have a Rowan!

You think he has no will of his own? You are a fool,Charlotte. Lie with him instead of me!_ I laughed at her, and seeing the pain in her eyes, I laughed more.__ should like to see it, you and your daimon. Lie there and call him to come now.

The greatest create of power you have on earth, whether you are an angel, a spirit, a man or woman or child is to help others.

Love me. You have destroyed everything! But if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me.

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.

You're the hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your tragedy.

It struck me, sharp and hard, that I had been given so many chances to save my soul that my entire life had been constructed around these chances! That was my nature - going from temptation to temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed.

I'm speaking of the character of human beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't accept a useless life just because they were born to it. I mean those who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do things..." He was moved by this, and I was a little surprised that I'd said it. Yet I felt I'd had hurt him somehow. "There is blessedness in that." I said. "There's sanctity. And God or no God, there is goodness in it. I know this the way I know the mountains are out there, that the stars shine.

Your body's dying...pay no attention

I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.

I wanted to kiss her, she was beautiful again to me. But I dared not risk it. It wasn't only that I would have frightened her, it was that the desire to kill her was almost overpowering. Some fierce purely male instinct in me wanted to claim her now simply because I had claimed her in another way before.

I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.

Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven__ tears enough for what you__e 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__ name. But Claudia did not hear her. __es, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your side.

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__ see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.

Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort.

My Lasher is powerful beyond yourdreams of a daimon, and he has learnt much.___earned,_ I repeated in amazement. __ow learned, Deborah, for he is merely a spirit, and they areforever foolish and therein lies the danger, that in granting our wishes they do not understand thecomplexity of them, and thereby prove our undoing. There are a thousand tales that prove it. Has this nothappened? How so do you say learned?

The most important trait of a writer is an authentic voice. Writers have to have faith in their own voice, and their own way of doing things. Originality is the gem that every writer possesses. Originality also brings on the most merciless attacks. The world resents originality in the beginning writer, and then rewards it abundantly once that writer has been successfully published. Cherish your own voice. Don't try to sound like anybody else. Sound like yourself and take the slings and arrows and keep going.

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. _ Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. _ Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn__ help you. Do it your own way. _ Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. _ The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won__ write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.