Interview with the Vampire

[Lestat catches Louis killing his victim's poodles instead of the woman herself. He then breaks her neck and scolds Louis.]

Lestat:
[angrily] You whining coward of a vampire who prowls the night feeding on... rats and poodles! You could have finished us both!

Louis:
[baring fangs] You condemned me to hell!

Lestat:
I don't know any hell.

Lestat:
You should consider yourself lucky. In Paris, a vampire must be clever for many reasons.

Louis:
Paris?

Lestat:
Here, all one needs is a pair of fangs. Heh.

Louis:
You came from Paris?

Lestat:
[bored] As did the one who made me.

Louis:
Tell me about him. You must've learned something from him.

Lestat:
I learned absolutely nothing. I wasn't given a choice, remember?

Louis:
But you must know something about the meaning of it all-

Lestat:
[yelling] Why?! [angrily bangs fist on table] Why should I know these things? Do you know them? [pauses; listens to drumming from outside] That noise. It's driving me mad; that noise! We've been in the country for weeks with nothing but that noise.

Louis:
Yes, they know about us. They watch us dine on empty plates and drink from empty glasses.

Lestat:
[calm] Come... to New Orleans, then. The Paris Opera is in town; we can try some French cui-cuisine.

Louis:
Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for life. [sighs]

Lestat:
You'll soon run out of chickens, Louis.

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 [narrating] But there was a Hell, and no matter where we moved to, I was in it.

Claudia [watching a beautiful woman] I want to be her. Can I, Louis? Be like her one day?

Lestat:
[irritated] Mon dieu, more melancholy nonsense. I swear, you grow more like Louis every day. Soon you'll be eating rats!

Claudia [disgusted] Rats? When did you eat rats, Louis?

Louis:
It was a long time ago, before you were born. And I don't recommend them.

[Louis weeps after recounting how the Parisian vampires killed Claudia and Madeleine]

Daniel Molloy:
So a vampire can cry.

Louis:
Once, maybe twice, in his own eternity. Maybe it was to quench those tears forever that I took such revenge on them.

[After Louis destroys the Parisian vampires in revenge for Claudia and Madeleine's deaths]

Armand:
You made me see their failings, Louis. They were... doomed. Stuck in their decadent time. And they had forgotten the first lesson: that we must 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...

[Armand chuckles]

Louis:
...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:
So you can have that too? The heart that mourns her? Her, that you burnt to a cinder?

Armand:
Louis, I swear I didn't—

Louis:
Ah, but I know you did. I know. You, who regrets nothing. You, who feels nothing. And if that's all I have left to learn, I can do that on my own. [starts walking away]

Armand:
Louis.

Louis:
Yes?

Armand:
I will die.

Louis:
No, you are dead, and you want me to quicken you once more. And as much as your invitation might appeal to me, I must regretfully decline.

Armand:
I know nothing of God... or the Devil. I have never seen a vision, nor learned a secret, that would damn or save my soul. And as far as I know, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.

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

Claudia:
Which one of you did it?! One of you did it! Which one of you made me the way I am?!

Claudia:
And here it is. And I hate you both!

Claudia:
Locked together in hatred. 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.

Claudia:
I'll put you in your coffin!

Claudia:
You have found your new companion, Louis! You will make me mine!

Claudia:
Your evil is that you cannot be evil. And I shall suffer for it no longer!

Claudia:
Snatching me from my mother's hands, like two monsters in a fairytale. And now you weep! I haven't tears enough for what you've done to me.

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

Lestat De Lioncourt:
Have you said your goodbyes to the light?

Lestat De Lioncourt:
Your body's dying. Pay no attention. It happens to us all.

Lestat De Lioncourt:
Evildoers are easier... and they taste better.

Lestat De Lioncourt:
It's your coffin, my love. Enjoy it. Most of us never get to know what it feels like.

Lestat De Lioncourt:
All I need to find you, Louis, is to follow the corpses of rats.

Lestat De Lioncourt:
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.

Lestat De Lioncourt:
I assume I need no introduction.

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

Louis De Pointe Du Lac:
I'm flesh and blood, but not human. I haven't been human for 200 years. Please, how shall I put you at ease? Shall we begin like David Copperfield? 'I am born...I grew up.' Or shall we begin when I was born to darkness, as I call it? That's really where we should start, don't you think?...1791 was the year it happened. I was 24. Younger than you are now. But times were different then. I was a man at that age. The master of a large plantation, just south of New Orleans. I had lost my wife in childbirth. She and the infant had been buried less than half a year. I would've been happy to join them. I couldn't bear the pain of their loss. I longed to be released from it. I wanted to lose it all: my wealth, my estate, my sanity....Most of all, I longed for death. I know that now. I invited it. A release from the pain of living. My invitation was open to anyone. To the whore at my side. To the pimp that followed. But it was a vampire that accepted.

Louis De Pointe Du Lac:
That morning I was not yet a vampire, and I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely, and yet I can't recall any before it. I watched the whole magnificence of the dawn for the last time as if it were the first. And then I said farewell to sunlight, and set out to become what I became.

Louis De Pointe Du Lac:
Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for life.

Louis De Pointe Du Lac:
How do we seem to you? Do you find us beautiful, magical? Our white skin, our fierce eyes? "Drink," you ask me. Do you have any idea of the thing you will become?

Louis De Pointe Du Lac:
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.