Anne Rice

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

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

When you make his sandwiches, put a sexy or loving note in his lunch box.

Memnoch the Devil happen to be my favorite of all The Vampire Chronicles.

The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don’t know each other very well.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I’ve always had a very close relationship with them.

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.

The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They’ve always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.

I want to love all the children of God – Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist – everyone. I want to love gay Christians and straight Christians.

I claim Dickens as a mentor. He’s my teacher. He’s one of my driving forces.

My own funeral, I’d like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

I wish we had more visible Christian and Catholic leaders who talked about love.

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

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don’t have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I’ve always felt that I wasn’t a member of any particular group.

We’re frightened of what makes us different.

I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

I can’t get very far away from Christianity, I can’t get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

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

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

Invest in a feather duster – the possibilities are endless.

I broke with my religion in college.

We need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.

Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.

The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis’s quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?

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

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.

Obviously, a writer can’t know everything about what she writes. It’s impossible.

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.

I do not read the ancient languages, but I am beginning to study Greek.

I’m always looking, and I’m always asking questions.

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.

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.

I’m going to keep on dealing with the supernatural in a lot of ways.

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.

Obsession led me to write. It’s been that way with every book I’ve ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

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 loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

It is tragic that many in America think of us – Christians – as being people who hate others.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it’s occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

The only pain in pleasure is the pleasure of the pain.

I can’t keep up with Stephen King’s output.

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

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.

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

You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.

I’m fascinated by almost any mythology that I can get my hands on.