Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing...but Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep appreciation for the ephemeral beauty and grandeur of life, while highlighting a profound connection to Paris that transcends mere physical existence.
In this quote, Anne Rice expresses a complex emotional response to the beauty and grandeur of life, particularly within the context of the city of Paris. She feels a sense of longing for these mortal experiences, yet finds solace and a sense of belonging in the heart of Paris, which allows her to forget her deeper existential desires and concerns. This duality emphasizes how the richness of life can both provoke yearning and provide a sanctuary for the soul.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a Paris-themed event to celebrate the city's unique charm.
From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries. I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its heart.
We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.
And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.
Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost–a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.
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.
In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?
Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything, without anguish, death, winter waiting along it with their eyes open through the dew.
I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.
Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.
One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.
Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.
As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. Even if some unknown landmass is there, and not just ocean, there was only one pair of original ancestors, and it is inconceivable that such distant regions should have been peopled by Adam's descendants.
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