Does anyone else know the size of your soul?

Hi! This is a sideblog devoted to The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. I'm a person who loves the books and specifically also has heavily annotated my copies of them, so I wanted a centralized place to gather some of my favorite quotes, Word of God from the author, and other "official" Vampire Chronicles material I found interesting. If you follow me you likely won't find a lot of hot takes, but I might share meta or opinions from time to time.

I am also good at tracking down specific information from the books, so send me an ask if there is a specific quote or fact you're looking for, and I may be able to find it for you!

Here are the tags I try to use, but keep in mind that I am human and might miss one. Books and characters should also be tagged:

things I made (book covers, blog posts, etc)

meta and lists (collections of info)

anne rice social media (facebook and twitter)

tvc quotes (for quotes from any and all of the books)

tvc book covers (official)

tvc comics and graphic novels

And I ached to write my story for [Louis], not an answer to his malice in Interview with the Vampire, but the tale of all the things I’d seen and learned before I came to him, the story I could not tell him before. Old rules didn’t matter to me now, either. I wanted to break every one of them. And I wanted my band and my book to draw out not only Louis but all the other demons that I had ever known and loved. I wanted to find my lost ones, awaken those who slept as I had slept. Fledglings and ancient ones, beautiful and evil and mad and heartless—they’d all come after me when they saw those video clips and heard those records, when they saw the book in the windows of the bookstores, and they’d know exactly where to find me. I’d be Lestat, the rock superstar. Just come to San Francisco for my first live performance. I’ll be there. But there was another reason for the whole adventure—a reason even more dangerous and delicious and mad. And I knew Louis would understand. It must have been behind his interview, his confessions. I wanted mortals to know about us. I wanted to proclaim it to the world the way I’d told it to Alex and Larry and Tough Cookie, and my sweet lawyer, Christine. And it didn’t matter that they didn’t believe it. It didn’t matter that they thought it was art. The fact was that, after two centuries of concealment, I was visible to mortals! I spoke my name aloud. I told my nature. I was there!

The Vampire Lestat

Well, let’s review, shall we? As I’ve said, I wrote the book and made the album because I wanted to be visible, to be seen for what I am, even if only in symbolic terms. ... I want you to know what really took place with us, even if you never believe it. In fiction if nowhere else, I must have a little meaning, a little coherence, or I will go mad. So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here . . . in my arms.

The Queen of the Damned

A dark secret smile stole over my lips as I looked at her, bitter and on the edge, once more, of tears. For nothing had changed in the realization that I had given her the words of accusation. The very same thing was true. There had been the opportunity for salvation—and I had said no. I wanted to say something to her as I held the locket; I wanted to say something to the being she had been, and to my own weakness, and to the greedy wicked being in me who had once again triumphed. For I had. I had won. Yes, I wanted to say something so terribly much! And would that it were full of poetry, and deep meaning, and would ransom my greed and my evil, and my lusty little heart. For I was going to Rio, wasn’t I, and with David, and with Louis, and a new era was beginning …  Yes, say something—for the love of heaven and the love of Claudia—to darken it and show it for what it is! Dear God, to lance it and show the horror at the core. But I could not. What more is there to say, really? The tale is told.

The Tale of the Body Thief

We want to know things; we share the same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We don’t either of us know what it means to die, no matter what we might say to the contrary. It’s a cinch that if we did, I wouldn’t be writing and you wouldn’t be reading this book. What does matter very much, as we go into this story together, is that I have set for myself the task of being a hero in this world. I maintain myself as morally complex, spiritually tough, and aesthetically relevant a being of blazing insight and impact, a guy with things to say to you. So if you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking again, that he is frightened, that he is searching desperately for the lesson and for the song and for the raison d’etre, that he wants to understand his own story and he wants you to understand it, and that it is the very best story he has right now to tell. If that’s not enough, read something else.

Memnoch the Devil

I want you to read every page I write. I want my prose to envelop you. I’d drink your blood if I could and hook you into every memory inside me, every heartbreak, frame of reference, temporary triumph, petty defeat, mystic moment of surrender. And all right, already, I’ll dress for the occasion. Do I ever not dress for the occasion? Does anybody look better in rags than me? Sigh. I hate my vocabulary! Why is it that no matter how much I read, I end up sounding like an international gutter punk? Of course one good reason for that is my obsession with producing a report to the mortal world that can be read by just about anyone. I want my books in trailer parks and university libraries. You know what I mean? I’m not, for all my cultural and artistic hunger, an elitist. Have you not guessed? Sigh again. I’m too desperate! A psyche permanently set on overdrive, that’s the fate of a thinking vampire. I should be out murdering a bad guy, lapping his blood as if he was a Popsicle. Instead I’m writing a book. That’s why no amount of wealth and power can silence me for very long. Desperation is the source of the fount. What if all this is meaningless? What if high-gloss French furniture with ormolu and inlaid leather really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things? You can shudder with desperation in the rooms of a palace as well as in a crash pad. Not to mention a coffin! But forget the coffin, baby. I’m not what you’d call a coffin vampire anymore. That’s nonsense. Not that I didn’t like them when I slept in them, however. In a way, there’s nothing like it—

Blood Canticle

Made by the powerful two-thousand-year-old Marius, Benji had no use for ideas of inherent guilt, mandatory self-hatred, and inevitable mental torment. Philosophy meant nothing to him. Survival was all. And he had another vision—that the blood drinkers of the world could be a strong and enduring tribe of immortals, hunters of the night who respected one another and demanded respect in return. And from that simple conviction in Benji’s audacious appeal, my monarchy was eventually born. And it is only in an informal and carefree style that I can tell you how I eventually came to terms with being the monarch. You will find the tale filled with digressions, and there may be times when you suspect the digressions are the story. And you may be right. But whatever the case, it’s the tale I have to tell about how I came to accept what others had offered to me, and how I came to know just who we creatures of the night really are. Oh, don’t worry. It’s not all interior reflection, and inner change, so to speak. There is action. There is intrigue. There is danger. And there were certainly surprises for me. But let’s get into it, shall we?

If you are a person who has ever used The Vampire Chronicles Wiki, has a lot of energy about the show right now, and would like to help it keep current as The Vampire Lestat comes out, please feel free to make an account and contribute! I am doing my best to keep things updated as I become aware of new information, but a lot of the small things people appreciate on wikis, like character pages, probably are something someone else might enjoy putting together more than I would!

If you'd like to add to the wiki, please check existing similar pages for the style and format, check the policies, and make sure you're working on the right side of the two sets of pages (books and show) for the two canons. Otherwise, I appreciate all editors willing to lend a hand!

If you have any questions at all, I am always happy to help, and you can ask me on here or over there.

I was reorganizing my bookshelves yet again, which meant trying to come up with a system for the Anne Rice collection yet again. The collection is about to be two years old, and I've learned a few things about this particular corner of book collecting in that time that might be helpful for other people, whether you're collecting this same thing, or another author or group of books within the past fifty years or so.

I don't work in books, so some of these explanations may be slightly off:

Signed means a book is signed with only the name of the author. Signed (bookplate) means that the author signed a book plate and it was placed into the front of the book. Inscribed usually means a book is made out to someone by name. The cost of editions with the author's signature go down in price in about the order I just listed them, with signed (not made out to anyone) being the most expensive.

There are multiple types of first editions. A first edition first printing is usually the most valuable version of a book. A book may also be a first edition but not a first printing or may be a first trade edition. If it's, for example, a first edition third printing, it means it is from the third run of books done prior to the publication date based on orders received. A first trade edition is the first edition that was sold to the general public, which means there may have been a prior limited or special edition. Whether or not you care what edition you're buying and under which definition is up to you.

A Book Club Edition (BCE) is not a first edition. This is relevant to Anne Rice collecting particularly because the Book Club Edition of Interview with the Vampire is easy to find, but not very valuable. Book Club Editions are kind of cute, they're smaller than the normal books. They also look similar to first editions if you're buying them online.

They made so many paperbacks in the eighties and nineties. So many. Infinite paperbacks. Many of them were not designed to stand the test of time, so their condition tends not to be as good, but they are extremely easy to find very cheap within the United States. There are some books that are actually paperback first editions. This can either be the first paperback printing after a hardcover was already made, or, in some cases (The Mummy) the first edition WAS a paperback.

If you are buying a book from an online used book retailer, there is no set standard for what Like New, Excellent, Very Good, Good, or Acceptable means, and most likely, your idea of what it means is better than the seller's. If you care about the quality very specifically, purchase from a listing with an actual image of the book you are buying. I will mention in my experience some of the really large used book retailers, like Thriftbooks, aren't bad about refunding if the quality you purchased was Like New or Excellent and it comes in with writing or damage on it.

If you want to protect the dust jacket of old hardback Knopf hardbacks specifically for some reason, from the eighties and nineties, you want to get the 10" mylar covers. You can get them pretty cheaply, which will be helpful if, once you put them on your one really fragile dustjacket, you decide you don't like how it looks for any of the others and decide against that plan. Those things are simple to put on and a good option for protecting covers, but they do make them look like library books.

People who list used books on eBay are often not aware of the value of the book they are listing. In the best case scenario, they are undervaluing something rare. Much more frequently, they are really overpricing something. Don't spend a lot of money on an edition that isn't rare. In person book stores are also extremely bad at pricing signed books, usually overestimating their value. I've seen multiple signed Anne Rice books in rare or used bookstores for sale at three to five times the price they are commonly listed online.

"Wow, you must be really obsessed to have the hobby of collecting books from a specific author." First of all, yes, but also second of all: I started this collection when I was the most broke I had ever been, because Anne Rice books are incredibly cheap if you live in the US in an area with a variety of used bookstores. If you want a fun niche hobby when you can't afford to do much else, get into collecting something niche and slightly hard to find that is cheap, and sold in stores that are fun to wander around in!