Anne Rice

The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.

You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.

But reason was only a created thing, imposed with faith upon the world, and the stars promise nothing to no one.

"No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "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.

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 their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

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.

"Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed."

The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.

In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art – the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases – 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.

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

Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.

"And when a strong man is sweet, even Goddesses look down from Mount Olympus."