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.
Interpretation
The quote explains how vampires serve as a powerful metaphor for expressing deep emotions and feelings.
Anne Rice articulates the idea that vampires, as fictional creatures, have been a significant metaphorical tool for her. Through the lens of vampirism, she can explore and convey complex emotions and deeper truths that resonate with her personal experiences and feelings, highlighting the role of fiction and symbolism in creative expression.
In practice
A writer could use this quote to explain how they relate to their characters.
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 lostβa heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.
In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?
Who knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different.
If each photograph steals a bit of the soul, isn't it possible that I give up pieces of mine every time I take a picture?
When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important
It was not in me It came and went I wanted to hold it It was held by wine (I no longer know what it was)
All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!
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