Despair is so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannekin in the window. It could be dispelled by the lights surrounding a tower. It would be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick’s coming into view. And then despair would come again. Meaningless, I almost said, aloud.
I had never fully understood till that moment,” said Teskhamen, “that we are the sum of all we’ve seen and all we’ve appreciated and understood. You were the sum of sunshine on marble floors filled with pictures of divine beings who laughed and loved and drank the fruit of the vine as surely as you were the sum of the poets and historians and philosophers you’d read. You were the sum and the fount of what you’d cherished and chosen to abide and all you had loved.
Heaven and hell wait for the young. Heaven and hell hover beyond the ocean before us and the sky spreading above us.
Fool, you never caused it!” said the voice. “Fool, you think you caused that to happen to us? You never caused anything. Fool, you couldn’t make a curse to save your soul!
And not having had any true gods of my own, I speak of all gods as if they were poetry.
I can live without God. I can even come to live with the idea there is no life after. But I do not think I could go on if I did not believe in the possibility of goodness.
And we, the crew, are bonded together, in spite of anger, or resentment, or competition. We are bonded and there is a form of love whether we acknowledge it or not.
The true crafty evil person is rare. It’s bumbling that causes most of the misery of the world, utter stupid bumbling.
You can sow the seeds of distrust everywhere, and lose yourself in an overgrown field.
I can walk through a myth and out of it!
Master of His Choir of Angels, that is Mozart; but Beethoven is the Master of My Dark Heart, the captain of my broken life and all my failures.
Beethoven’s Ninth. I played the torture part. I played the Second Movement.
Her gaze was steady but never anything but soft. “Louis de Pointe du Lac would see a ghost now,” she said, musing, “as if his suffering isn’t enough.
It’s so easy to wish for death when nothing’s wrong with you! It’s so easy to fall in love with death, and I’ve been all my life, and seen its most faithful worshipers crumble in the end, screaming just to live, as if all the dark veils and the lilies and the smell of candles, and grandiose promises of the grave, meant nothing.
Well, now I know, whether I believe in hell or not, that vampires can love each other, that in being dedicated to evil, one does not cease to love.
Hell is hatred.
I prayed for it, Andrei. I prayed they wouldn’t get you for their filthy catacombs, their dark earthen cells. Well, so my prayer is answered! Go with God, Andrei. Go with God. Go with God!
I can write it myself,” I said, “if only you give me the parchment and the pen. I need for you to send it, and establish this place for the receipt of an answer to it.
My Master’s face was rapt and beautiful, a white flame against the wavering golden light of countless candles. He stood over me.
I had scarce time to grab a few important scrolls. Desperately I sought for Ovid, whom Pandora had so loved, and for the great tragedians of Greece. Avicus reached out his arms to help me.