“The vampires represent those of us in society who feel damned and I am always seeking a way for them and those of us who identify with them to be saved.”
– “Interview With a Vampire” novelist Anne Rice, in an interview with America magazine.
In the beginning there was nothing but myths and legends. But then John Polidari's The Vamprye (1819) came upon the publishing scene and all were impressed. But soon readers said: "more, please?!" So Sheridan LeFanu's Carmella came about in 1871 yet, still vampire aficionados wished for more!
Bram Stoker, hearing them and envisioning an icon for vampire fans forever, penned Dracula in 1897. And yea, Dracula flourished and rightly so. And there were films—and all the world would know his name.
But then it got kind of predictable what with Gothic castles over
and over, fun, sure—but something new was needed! So there came along the King, called Stephen who answered prayers with Salem’s Lot.
This knocked the stuffing out of the Gothic vampire and readers were thrilled because it was bloody good!
Think of it, vampires among us, next door—imagine! And the people were
happy and gave thanks.
And then, one year later! She who will be called great in my book,
published Interview with a Vampire!
Okay, seriously? These three vampiric creations are iconic. Dracula, Salem's Lot and Interview with a Vampire. In my opinion these 3 are it!
Anne Rice brought back Gothic vampires in her own
style with her own genius. She infused in them depth by giving us personal histories which gave us rich characterisations.
She made them real beings. Okay, they subsisted on blood, but they had
feelings and memories. Living lives as well as undead ones. She gave us vampire literature that is unique.
Following the death of her young daughter, she wrote
Interview with a Vampire and she wrote it in six weeks. It must have poured out
of her. I can imagine her doing it, giving us a piece of her soul.
One of the characters in the novel is a child vampire. The child, Claudia haunts all of us. What is more haunting than
a child vampire? I happen to think, there is a connection with her own loss
here.
Interview with the Vampire became as
it would turn out, one novel in The Vampire Chronicles.
By the way The Vampire Chronicles has been compared to Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein and rightly so in my opinion.
I think everyone's favorite vampire is Lestat maybe because he's mine.
Her newest book is Prince Lestat published in 2014.
She hasn't only written of vampires. She's done a fantastic spin on fairy tales. Witches, werewolves demons, mummies as well as historical and religious characters. She is the writer's writer. She ventures forth into new territory all the time. That takes guts and skill. Anne Rice, thank you!
Her books:
1960s
"October 4, 1948" (1965) Short Fiction
"Nicholas and Jean" (1966) Short Fiction
"October 4, 1948" (1965) Short Fiction
"Nicholas and Jean" (1966) Short Fiction
1970s
Interview with The Vampire (1976)
"Armand's Lesson" (January 1979 Playboy magazine) Short Fiction
The Feast of All Saints (1979)
1980s
Cry to Heaven (1982)
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983) as A. N. Roquelaure
Beauty's Punishment (1984) as A. N. Roquelaure
"The Master of Rampling Gate" (1984) Redbook magazine) Short Fiction
Beauty's Release (1985)as A. N. Roquelaure
The Vampire Lestat (1985)
Exit to Eden (1985) as Anne Rampling
Belinda (1986) as Anne Rampling
The Queen of the Damned (1988)
The Mummy (1989)
1990s
The Witching Hour (1990)
The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
Lasher (1993)
Taltos (1994)
Memnoch the Devil (1995)
Servant of the Bones (1996)
Violin (1997)
The Vampire Armand (1998)
Pandora (1998)
Vittorio the Vampire (1999)
2000's
Merrick (2000)
Blood and Gold (2001)
Blackwood Farm (2002)
Blood Canticle (2003)
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008)
Called out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008) Autobiography (non-fiction)
Angel Time (2009)
2010s
Of Love and Evil (2010)
The Wolf Gift (2012)
The Wolves of MidWinter 2013
Prince Lestat 2014
(Vampire)
The Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Queen of the Damned (2002)
(Misc.)
Exit to Eden (1994)
TELEVISION
The Feast of All Saints (2001)
Anne Rice is the writer I most admire. Anne Rice is iconic and from a personal opinion, she is my icon.
Some memorable quotes by the lady herself:
Evil is a point of view.
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.
ANNE RICE, Pandora
Sometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.
ANNE RICE, Pandora
No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of ther beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
ANNE RICE, Blood and Gold
Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
Suffering of sentient beings is like decay; it fertilizes the growth of their souls.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written -- behind your silence and your suffering.
ANNE RICE, Pandora
Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
Despair was so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannikin in the window. It could be dispelled by the spectacle of lights surrounding a tower. It could be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick's coming into view. And then despair would come again.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
O, wicked love ... that has so many unnamed components.
ANNE RICE, Beauty's Punishment
A writer can’t know everything about what she writes. It’s impossible. You reach deep down and you 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.
ANNE RICE, interview, Oct. 2, 2003
There was no point in waiting until the next world. You had to do everything now, every kind of sin.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.
ANNE RICE, BookPage interview, Nov. 2005
This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
When love is reached through suffering ... it has a power it can never gain through innocence.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
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.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
Who knows what the hell a government is or what the hell a government does.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
Vampires always order hot drinks. They aren't going to drink them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and that is so good.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord.
ANNE RICE, Newsweek, Oct. 31, 2005
I love the one who punishes me well.
ANNE RICE, Beauty's Release
I think any supernatural hero today, whether he’s a vampire, werewolf, a resuscitated mummy, whatever he is, is going to have to deal with the fact that scientists are going to want to catch him and study him. His big enemy is not going to be Dr. Van Helsing today, it’s going to be the doctor who wants to put him in a lab and get his blood for what it can do to cure disease or grant immortality.
ANNE RICE, interview, Lightspeed Magazine, Jun. 2012
The vampire is an outsider. He’s the perfect metaphor for those things. He’s someone who looks human and sounds human, but is not human, so he’s always on the margins.
ANNE RICE, interview, The Daily Beast, Nov. 23, 2011
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
ANNE RICE, The Vampire Lestat
Oh, the lies that I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.
ANNE RICE, Blood and Gold
For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.... In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
ANNE RICE, Facebook post, Jul. 28, 2010, reprinted in The Huffington Post, Jul. 29, 2010
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.
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
Beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.
ANNE RICE, The Vampire Lestat
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
ANNE RICE, Servant of the Bones
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.
ANNE RICE, Blackwood Farm
quotes from: ANNE RICE QUOTES:
http://www.notable-quotes.com/r/rice_anne.html
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