What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not.

I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others-all our kind who know of her-they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach...

Drink." she whispered, drawing nearer. "Drink." she held the soft, tender flesh of the wrist towards me. "No. I know what to do; haven't I done it in the past?" I said to her.

I love you still, that's the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I hate you!

The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware.

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.