INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE - QUOTATIONS FROM THE FILM

Armand

I have never seen a vision, nor learned a secret, that would damn or save my soul.

The world changes, we do not; therein lies the irony that finally kills us.

Claudia

Locked together in hatred. I can hate Lestat. But I can't hate you, Louis. Louis, my love, I was mortal until you gave me your immortal kiss. You became my mother, and my father, and so I'm yours forever. But now it's time to end it, Louis. Now it's time to leave him.

One lesson you taught me: never drink from the dead.

I'll put you in your coffin!

Lestat

Do you still want death? Or have you tasted it enough?

I've come to answer your prayers. Life has no meaning anymore, does it? The wine has no taste, food sickens you and there seems no reason for any of it.

Don't be afraid. I'm going to give you the choice I never had.

Your body's dying. Pay no attention, it happens to us all.

All I ever need to find you is to follow the corpses of rats.

Pain is terrible for you. You feel it like no other creature because you are a vampire.

Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscriminately, and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are; none so like him as ourselves.

[After dancing with a rotting corpse] There's still life in the old lady yet! Louis! [laughing] Come back! You are what you are! Merciful death, how you love your precious guilt.

Claudia ... you've been a very, very naughty little girl

.
Oh, Louis, Louis. Still whining, Louis. Have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries!

Louis

Do you have enough [tape] for the story of a life?

I'm flesh and blood, but not human. I haven't been human for two hundred years.

-To Daniel Malloy

You lack the courage of your convictions, sir. Do it.

I saw it as though it was my last, but I could recall no other before it.

Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for life.

Her blood coursed through my veins sweeter than life itself. And as it did, Lestat's words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed, and when I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.

A little child she was, but also a fierce killer, now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child's demanding.

How do we seem to you? Do you find us beautiful, magical? Our white skin, our fierce eyes? "Drink me," you ask me; do you have any idea of the thing you will become?

But the world was a tomb to me, a graveyard of broken statues, and each of those statues resembled her face.

Whatever happened to Lestat I do not know. I go on, night after night. I feed on those who cross my path. But all my passion went with her golden hair. I'm a spirit of preternatural flesh. Detached. Unchangeable. Empty.

Dialogue

Louis: Where are we?
Lestat: Where do you think, my idiot friend? We're in a nice, filthy cemetery. Does this make you happy? Is this fitting, proper enough?
Louis: We belong in Hell.
Lestat: And what if there is no Hell, or they don't want us there? Ever think of that?
Louis: But there was a Hell, and no matter where we moved to, I was in it.

Claudia: You ... fed on me.
Louis: Yes. And he found me with you, and he cut his wrist and fed you from it, and you were a vampire, and have been every night thereafter.
Claudia: You both did it.
Louis: I took your life ... he gave you another one.
Claudia: And here it is, and I hate you both!

Lestat: More melancholy nonsense. I swear, you grow more and more like Louis each day. Soon you'll be eating rats!
Claudia: Rats? When did you eat rats, Louis?
Louis: It was a long, long time ago, before you were born. [playfully slurps] And I don't recommend them.

[Lestat has just given Claudia a doll]
Claudia: Another doll? I have dozen, you realize.
Lestat: I thought you could use one more.
Claudia: Why always on this night?
Lestat: What do you mean?
Claudia: You always give me a doll on the same night of the year.
Lestat: Oh? I didn't realize.
Claudia: Is this my birthday? You dress me like a doll. You make my hair like a doll. Why?
Lestat (trying to change the subject): Some of these, Claudia, are so old ... tattered. You should throw them away.
Claudia: I will, then!
[Claudia begins removing the dolls from her bed, revealing the naked corpse of a woman lying underneath.]
Lestat: Claudia? Claudia? Claudia! What have you done?
Claudia: What you told me to do!
Louis: Leave a corpse here to rot?
Claudia: I wanted her! I wanted to be her!
[Claudia pushes past Louis and exits the room]
Lestat: She's mad!
Louis: Claudia.
Lestat: Pollutes the very house we live in!
Claudia: Do you want me to be a doll forever?!
[Takes out a pair of scissors and holds them to her hair]
Louis: Claudia, don't!
Claudia: Why not? Can't I change, like everybody else?!
[Proceeds to cut off her hair then runs into her bedroom. Seconds later Claudia's screams are heard from within her room. Louis busts in to find Claudia in front of the mirror with a full head of curls]
Claudia: Which one of you did it?! [pushes past Louis and confronts Lestat] Which one of you made me the way I am?!
Lestat: What you are? A vampire gone insane, that pollutes its own bed?
Claudia: And if I cut my hair again!
Lestat: It will grow back again.
Claudia: But it wasn't always so. I had a mother once. And Louis, he had a wife. He was mortal, the same was she. And so was I!
Louis: Claudia!
Claudia: You made us what we are! Didn't you?
Lestat: Stop her, Louis!
Claudia: Did you do it to me?
[Claudia cuts Lestat's cheeks with the scissors. Lestat looks at Claudia stunned]
Claudia: How did you do it?
Lestat: And why should I tell you? It's in my power.
Claudia: Why yours alone? Tell me how it was done!
Lestat: Be glad I made you what you are.
[Lestat jumps out of the chair he had been sitting in and grabs Claudia by the throat]
Lestat: You'd be dead now if I hadn't. Liked that damned corpse. Now get rid of it!
Claudia: You get rid of it!
[She drops the scissors, then storms out]

Lestat: Absinthe. You've given them absinthe.
Claudia: No, laudanum. It killed them, unfortunately, but it keeps the blood warm.
Lestat: Listen, Louis. There's life in these old hands still. Not quite Furioso. Moderato? Cantabile, perhaps.

Claudia: How could it be?
Lestat: Ask the alligator. His blood helped. Then on the diet of the blood of snakes, toads, and all the putrid life of the Mississippi, slowly, Lestat became something like himself again. Claudia ... you've been a very, very naughty little girl.

Louis: Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires.
Claudia: How avant-garde!

Armand: They had forgotten the first lesson, that we are to be powerful, beautiful, and without regret.
Louis: And you can teach me this?
Armand: Yes.
Louis: To be without regret?
Armand: Yes.
Louis: Then what a pair we could make ... but what if it's a lesson I don't care to learn?
Armand: What do you mean?
Louis: What if all I have is my suffering, my regret?
Armand: Don't you want to lose it?
Louis: Why? So you can have that too? The heart that mourns her; her, that you burnt to a cinder?
Armand: Louis, I swear that I ...
Louis: Ah, but I know you did. I know. You who regrets nothing, you who feels nothing, if that's all I have left to learn, I can do that on my own ... and as much as your invitation may appeal to me, I must regretfully decline.

Lestat: No one could resist me. Not even you, Louis.
Louis: I tried.
Lestat (smiling): And the more you tried, the more I wanted you.

Taglines

Drink from me and live forever