1,174 Quotes by Anne Rice

And there is another kind of strength in you. A daring, and a hunger, and aloneness. And that hunger and aloneness I know, and I kiss with the lips I do not have; I hold with the arms I do not have; I press to the heart in me that isn’t there to beat with warmth.

Don’t let the old story repeat itself now. Arm yourself with all that’s happened.

And my heart beat faster for the mountains of eastern Europe, finally, beat faster for the one hope that somewhere we might find in that primitive countryside the answer to why under God this suffering was allowed to exist – why under God it was allowed to begin, and how under God it might be ended. I had not the courage to end it, I knew, without that answer.

Don’t you see? I’m not the spirit of any age. I’m at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!

Did all the answers lie beyond the open door? Is the future beyond the open door? For after all, why could this not become, in spite of everything, a mere chapter of her life, marked off and seldom reread, once she had returned to the outside world where she had been kept all these years, quite beyond the spells and enchantments that were now claiming her? Oh, but it wasn’t going to be. Because when you fell prey to a spell this strong, you were never the same.

The stars shone as brightly as if they were tumbling on the Final Day.

It’s an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn’t destroy us, if it doesn’t burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

She had no idea, really, what it meant to see a man’s arm ripped out by the root, to see a head torn off a neck. She had no idea. We human beings live perpetually insulated from the horrors that happen all around us. No matter what she’d suffered, she had not witnessed the vicious ugliness of that kind of death. No, it had to be unreal to her, even Laura who had endured so much.

I had a great and unshakable love of her. I don’t think anyone else did. And one thing that endeared her to me always was that she never said anything ordinary.