Interview with the Vampire (TV series)/season 1

Season 1 2 Main

Interview with the Vampire (2022-present), created by Rolin Jones, is a television series about Louis de Pointe du Lac recounting his past life and tumultuous relationship with his maker and lover, Lestat de Lioncourt based on the 1976 novel and elements from The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice.

Season 1

In Throes of Increasing Wonder... [1.01]

Daniel Molloy: It's not an interview; it's a... it's a fever dream told to an idiot.

Lestat de Lioncourt: What rage you must feel when you choke on your sorrow.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I came to know Christ in a monastery. I wanted to be a priest. Just like you, Paul. And under the guidance and discipline of the monks who lived there, I came to memorize both testaments, the writings of Assisi, Aquinas, Erasmus, all the saints and scholars. My father, a vulgar man, did not think much of this education. And so he and my brothers conspired to pull me out, lock me away, where, between beatings, starvations and the failure of Christ to intercede the beatings and starvations, I slowly forgot all about the testaments, Assisi, Aquinas, Erasmus, all of it. And so to answer your boring question, there is an ocean between Christ and myself! J'espère que cela satisfera les oiseaux perchés dans la cage de votre esprit!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [In confession] I'm a drunk, Lord. I'm a liar. I am a thief, Lord. I profit off the miseries of other men, and I do it easy. Drugs, liquor, women. I lure them in and grab what they got, Lord. I take daughters with no homes and I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself sayin' I'm givin' 'em roof and food and dollar bills in they pocket, but I look in the mirror, I know what I am. The big man in the big house, stuffin' cotton in my ear so I can't hear their cries. And, Lord, I dragged my family into this mess with me. I shame my father. I failed my brother. I lost my mother and sister, and rather than fix it like a man should, Lord, I run like a coward. I run to the bottle. I run to the grift. I run to bad beds. I laid down with a man. I laid down with the Devil. And he has roots in me. All his spindly roots in me. And I can't think nothin' anymore but his voice and his words! Please! Help me! I am weak! I wanna die!

Lestat de Lioncourt: The first time I laid eyes on you, your beautiful face, I saw that sorrow. I did not know how it got there or why it was so voluminous. I can take away that sorrow, Louis. I can give you that death you begged your feeble, blind, degenerate, nonexistent god for. But I can do it joyfully. I can swap this life of shame, swap it out for a dark gift and a power you can't begin to imagine. You just have to ask me for it. You just have to nod your beautiful head and say yes.

Lestat de Lioncourt: This primitive country has picked you clean. It has shackled you in permanent exile. Every room you enter, every hat you're forced to wear. The stern landlord, the deferential businessman, the loyal son! All these roles you conform to, and none of them your true nature! What rage you must feel as you choke on your sorrow. The first time I laid eyes on you, your beautiful face, I saw that sorrow. I did not know how it got there or why it was so voluminous. I can take away that sorrow, Louis. I can give you that death you begged your feeble, blind, degenerate, nonexistent god for. But I can do it joyfully. I can swap this life of shame, swap it out for a dark gift and a power you can't begin to imagine. You just have to ask me for it. You just have to nod your beautiful head and say yes. I love you, Louis. You are loved. I send my love to you, and you send it back round to me. And this circle, this home we've barely had a glimpse of, know it frightens me as much as it does you.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Voiceover] Dear Mr. Molloy, I hope this letter finds you safe and thriving, if such a thing were a possibility in this bleak hour. I've been following your career with some interest since our last meeting. Please allow me to congratulate you on all your successes, those professional and those personally redemptive. The passage of time and the frailties that accompany it have provided me perspective. And I suspect the same might be true for you as well. I'm hoping health and pride won't deter you from the following proposal: In a week's time, in a setting of my choosing, we revisit the project boyish youth prevented us from finishing. Forty-nine years and thousands of miles removed from the room we shared in San Francisco, I offer, for your journalistic pleasures, my full attention and my life story. All affinities, Louis de Pointe du Lac.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I had planned to make a new life for myself in St. Louis. That was to be my destiny. And now I know I was right. Only it turns out the saint is not a city, but a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition.

Lily: You're his destiny, Louis!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Destined to be very good friends.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You've grown old, Daniel.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Emasculation and admiration in equal measure. I wanted to murder the man... and I wanted to be the man.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I was being hunted. And I was completely unaware it was happening.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It was a cold winter that year, and Lestat was my coal fire.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Emasculation and admiration in equal measure. I wanted to murder the man, and I wanted to be the man. I had come there for Lily, but I left thinking of only him.

Paul de Pointe du Lac: Are you one with Christ, Monsieur Lioncourt?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: How 'bout you shut your damn mouth?

Florence de Pointe du Lac: Louis...

Lestat de Lioncourt: That's alright, Louis, Madame. The birds speak for him... I came to know Christ in a monastery. I wanted to be a priest. Just like you, Paul.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Begins to hypnotize Paul] And under the guidance and discipline of the monks who lived there, I came to memorize both testaments, the writings of Assisi, Aquinas, Erasmus, all the saints and scholars. My father, a vulgar man, did not think much of this education. And so he and my brothers conspired to pull me out, lock me away, where, between beatings, starvations and the failure of Christ to intercede the beatings and starvations, I slowly forgot all about the testaments, Assisi, Aquinas, Erasmus, all of it. And so to answer your boring question, there is an ocean between Christ and myself! J'espère que cela satisfera les oiseaux perchés dans la cage de votre esprit!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Slams the table] Don't do that shit here! Not with my family. You understand?

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Long pause] I am cursed with my father's temper at times. The rudeness is all mine.

Florence de Pointe du Lac: That's alright. It's the humidity, it does that sometimes.

Lestat de Lioncourt: This primitive country has picked you clean. It has shackled you in permanent exile. Every room you enter, every hat you're forced to wear -- the stern landlord, the deferential businessman, the loyal son -- all these roles you conform to, and none of them your true nature! What rage you must feel as you choke on your sorrow.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Be my companion, Louis. Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I love you, Louis. You are loved. I send my love to you, and you send it back round to me. And this circle, this home we've barely had a glimpse of, know it frightens me as much as it does you.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It is difficult to explain how his words disarmed me, how efficiently succinct and impenetrable his argument was. All my conceptions, even my guilt and my wish to die, seemed utterly important. And I completely forgot myself and the barbaric scene that surrounded me. For the first time in my life, I was seen.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He drained me to the very threshold of death... The blood, it came as a dull roar at first. And then a pounding, like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder as if some enormous creature were coming through a dark and alien forest. A huge drum. And then, there came a pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming behind him, each giant intent on his own drum, giving no notice to the rhythm of the other. Throbbing in my lips, fingers and flesh of my temple. Above all, in my veins. Drum and then the other drum. I opened my eyes, and it was then that I realized the drum was my heart and the other drum had been his. I saw him sitting a length away from me, radiant. And we sat there for some time... in throes of increasing wonder... The end. The beginning.

Daniel Molloy: I've been fired from three papers, hired back at two of them, third got gobbled up by Knight Ridder. So to be clear here, I'm a goddamn reservoir of dos and don'ts.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You've grown old, Daniel.

Daniel Molloy: Yeah, well, mortality beats a heavy drum.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Seul l'impossible peut faire l'impossible.

Lily: I don't know much what you're saying, but it sure sounds nice.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: 'Only the impossible can do the impossible.'

Lestat de Lioncourt: Bonsoir, monsieur. You speak French?

Lily: We speak all sorts of tongues in New Orleans.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's a hard table to get. How'd you manage it?

Lestat de Lioncourt: How'd you manage to get yourself through the front door?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Excuse me?

Lestat de Lioncourt: I mean that as a compliment, a man of your race to have privileges here.

Lily: Louis has a small empire of his own down the street. It gives him privileges. [Lestat laughs]

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Somethin' funny about that?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Your name is Louis. Of course it's Louis.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I didn't get your name, fella.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Je suis désolé. Je m'amuse trop en privé. I know who you are, sir. You're the man who made me buy a townhouse in the Quarter. I owe you everything. Please join us.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You hit an alderman? Goddamnit, Bricks.

Bricktop Williams: He stuck it in my shitbox!

Alderman Fenwick: I did no such thing!

Bricktop Williams: Gave him a chance to pull out and he kept on fuckin', so I gave him a little squirt of my catfish dinner for goin' there. Don't believe me? Check his dick.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Who the fuck you talkin' to? I ain't checkin' no man's dick. [Bricks raises Fenwick's shirt] Oh, goddamn.

Bricktop Williams: [To Fenwick] Hell, I mighta even said yes if you would just ask. But I don't care who you is, you put a dick in an asshole without askin', that's against Jesus! Fuck you!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You've had some health concerns of late.

Daniel Molloy: Whole planet's having a moment, I'd say.

Daniel Molloy: Here's another question: That's the sun out there; where's your coffin?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You're standing in it.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I couldn't believe it. Staring me down as his hands went wandering the seams of Miss Lily's dress. I wanted to take the end of my cane and slit his throat with it.

Daniel Molloy: Why didn't you?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I couldn't move. My body was seized with weakness. His gaze tied a string around my lungs, and I found myself immobilized.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Pulls a knife on Paul] Get on home, else I'll bleed you like a cochon, bruh!

Daniel Molloy: You started hanging out.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He was in love with my city and wanted to know everything he could about it.

Daniel Molloy: So you played docent to the gentleman vampire?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He had not revealed his vampire nature yet.

Daniel Molloy: I'm assuming you only met at night.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's New Orleans. Days are for sleeping off the previous evening's damage.

Daniel Molloy: Perfect cover for a vampire.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Racing ahead again, Mr. Molloy. Let the tale seduce you. Just as I was seduced.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: My business and my raised religion were at odds. And the, uh, latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself. That I was a red-blooded son of the South, seeking ass before absolution.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [To Louis, telepathically, during a card came] These men look down on you. I have to say, I find it appalling how men like yourself are treated in this country of yours... Ten percent. Fifteen percent. Do you not know your value? Do you suffer these indignities for some larger purpose? And do you think two pair will win the hour?

Lestat de Lioncourt: And the women... All shades of skin-white, black, cinnamon. I've emptied a bank vault sampling, I must say.

Lestat de Lioncourt: New to the... the New World, I am.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: That explains the clothes.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I'm switching rooms. I don't need to hear you and your good man making noise.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: You'd have to be home to hear that.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I come home nights.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: You come home some nights. Out cattin' with some white man, I hear.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He ain't white. He French.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: Oh, that's a new kind of white, is it? French white?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He different.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: Invite him over for dinner. Mother loves European.

Paul de Pointe du Lac: You still doing business with that man Lestat?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Nah. Didn't work out.

Paul de Pointe du Lac: That's good, 'cause he the Devil.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You think everyone's the Devil.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You did good gettin' off that boat when you did. St. Louis is dull as dishwater.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Yes, I feel quite at home here.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: When you were using drugs, Mr. Molloy, do you remember the best you ever had?

Daniel Molloy: Berkely, 1978, some Mexican black tar that Carly and Pedro were slinging.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: So imagine that flowing inside your veins again. Now, multiply it by miles to the rings of Saturn and back... He had taken what he called 'un petit coup,' the little drink. Not enough to kill me, but just enough to keep him fit. It takes an enormous amount of restraint for us, the little drink. For a human, experiencing it for the first time, it was... unsettling. And not for the physical toll it took on my body, which was significant, but for the feelings of intimacy it awoke within me. I had never allowed myself to feel emotionally close to anyone, much less a man. I had no room for feelings like these in my life. You could be a lot of things in New Orleans, but an openly gay Negro man was not one of 'em.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [To Louis] Come to me.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [In Paul's funeral procession] Mes condoléances.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Pas ici.

Lestat de Lioncourt: An elegant coffin. Would you tell me where you purchased?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Move on.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I wait on my balcony every night. You've been avoiding me.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I have been occupied.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Miss Lily proved herself a poor substitute and I don't take kindly to being avoided.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's my brother's funeral!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Believe me when I tell you, your brother longed for that flagstone.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It bears repeating, I did not consider myself a homosexual man at the time. I mean, I had had experiences. Guilt, shame, floating-on-a-sea-of-vodka type encounters. Obviously, I've come to embrace my sexuality. Course, you know that. We met at a gay bar, didn't we, Daniel?

Daniel Molloy: It was a good place to score. I did what I had to.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Do you think God heard you, Louis? In that tawdry box, through this pig vessel, this-- this charlatan? Do you not see how unworthy he is? How can you humiliate yourself like this?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Bless me Father, for I have sinned. Grievously sinned.

Father Matthias: Sign of the cross, son.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I'm a drunk, Lord. I'm a liar. I am a thief, Lord. I profit off the miseries of other men, and I do it easy. Drugs, liquor, women. I lure them in and grab what they got, Lord. I take daughters with no homes and I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself sayin' I'm givin' 'em roof and food and dollar bills in they pocket, but I look in the mirror, I know what I am. The big man in the big house, stuffin' cotton in my ear so I can't hear their cries. And, Lord, I dragged my family into this mess with me. I shame my father. I failed my brother.

Father Matthias: No, son.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I lost my mother and sister, and rather than fix it like a man should, Lord, I run like a coward. I run to the bottle. I run to the grift. I run to bad beds. I laid down with a man. I laid down with the Devil. And he has roots in me. All his spindly roots in me. And I can't think nothin' anymore but his voice and his words! Please, help me! I am weak and I want to die!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You killed Lily.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Cut short that magnificent life she was living? What a tragedy.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Ain't no fever out there. That's you. You bringin' the death to town.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I give death to those deserving. I'm not the Devil. You were wrong about that. But I can give you death.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I've seen death over and over and over and over again. It's boring.

Daniel Molloy: That'll make a great blurb.

Lily: That's a nice music box you got there.

Lestat de Lioncourt: It's one of the few things I brought with me from the continent.

Lily: What's that li'l song playing?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Do you like it? I composed it for a young violinist I once knew, a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Hunting is an art. You have the power to subdue anyone you want, but sometimes restraint is your most powerful weapon.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He had a way about him those first years, Lestat. Preternaturally charming, occasionally thoughtful. He was my murderer, my mentor, my lover and my maker -- all of those things at once. He didn't choose me to be his doormat. I knew he enjoyed it when I fought back, but there was present a kind of worship on my part. The earth beneath me always felt liquid.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Why do you do this, Lestat?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Well, I like to do it. I enjoy it.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Well, I don't. You don't have to humiliate him.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Shouts] Well, I don't say that you have to enjoy it! Kill them swiftly if you have to, but do it! Embrace what you are! You are a killer, Louis!

Lestat de Lioncourt: If you listen to me, if you finally submit to your nature, you will be filled, Louis, with all the life you can hold. You will see death in all its beauty, life as it is only known at the very point of death. You alone, of all creatures, can see death with that impunity. You alone, under the rising moon, can strike like the hand of God.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I realize the hypocrite I am, emphasizing cleanliness after I overindulged, but a proper disposal is the penance of a sated vampire. And you won't always have a conveniently-located graveyard nearby.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Referring to tenor singing out of tune] I don't understand how someone like that can make it onto a stage. I understand they're a rogue company, but are they pulling talent from roadside gas stations?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Vampires are killers. Apex predators whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment, the ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow, but with the thrilling satisfaction of being the end of that life and having a hand in the divine plan.

Daniel Molloy: Don't expect every reader to swallow that one.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Two vampires walk into a church. That's where we left off.

Daniel Molloy: Blissing out post-priesticide.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Disposing of a body] This was your man's esquire sent in his stead.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I was hungry.

Lestat de Lioncourt: A stone's throw from your place of business. What were you thinking?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He disrespected me.

Lestat de Lioncourt: How did he do that?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He said I did a good job.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You are a library of confusion!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Here's an idea: let's take a holiday. How about Rome?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Rome? Rome, Italy?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Would you prefer Rome, Wisconsin?

Lestat de Lioncourt: A couple of parish priests go missing, people say, 'Fine. Most likely kid fiddlers.' But this, this was an important man in town. The police will be looking for this man, fledgling!

Lestat de Lioncourt: [gesturing to the incinerator] That's why we got this beast, yeah? No, you need to show restraint, fledgling!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Oh, you need to stop using that word right now, 'cause it's soundin' a little like 'slave.'

Lestat de Lioncourt: Don't say it...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Well, that's what it fuckin' sound like. That's what it feel like sometimes.

Lestat de Lioncourt: And the carousel comes around again.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Fuck you!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Va te faire foutre aussi!

Lestat de Lioncourt: The sun gives life to everything but us. I should have told you that. The life of a vampire has its challenges and its rewards. But I think New Orleans, with its music, culture, cuisine, shipping yards, conventioneers, thrill-seeking tourists far-flung from their homes, the laissez-faire attitude of the local police force... [chuckles] Oh yes, the perfect setting for a vampire home... a vampire romance.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I thought we could have an orgy. You can fuck them and I can eat them.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You ever think that we -- that's to say, our kind -- were put on earth for a larger purpose?

Lestat de Lioncourt: I put you on this earth. Your purpose is to enjoy yourself.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: That can't be all there is. I know you don't believe that.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Well, tell me what I believe, Louis. Excavate the hoarded thoughts buried beneath my damned soul.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You're angry.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I'm pondering.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Pondering what?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Your night had nothing to do with ridding the world of criminals or finding some morality to buoy your existence. You're ashamed of what we are.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Maybe I'm just pondering what I am.

Lestat de Lioncourt: For the infinitesimal time, you're a vampire.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I don't want to kill people anymore. There it is.

Lestat de Lioncourt: A fish that doesn't swim. A bird refusing flight. You're going to struggle. I fear for the feline population of New Orleans.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Being confronted about the discrepancies in his recollection of his life with Lestat] The version we speak of now is the more nuanced portrait.

Daniel Molloy: Hmm. Or the more rehearsed.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Perhaps I was mistaken about the 'Wolverine Blues.'

Daniel Molloy: Fuck the 'Wolverine Blues.' Ken Burns can choke on the footnotes. It's the abused-abuser psychological relationship I'm talking about.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I do not consider myself abused.

Daniel Molloy: I mean, usually when you're a little too close to it, the abused still loves the abuser, but you flipped it completely on its head.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I'm not a victim.

Daniel Molloy: Fifty years later, you talk like he was your soulmate. Like you were locked in some fucked up gothic romance. Why?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Reading aloud from Daniel's memoir] 'I am in my Buick, staring in the rearview mirror at my daughter in the car seat, an hour after I gave Derek, a guy I don't know, the last 30 bucks I had. My editor reminds me it's seven years before car seats are mandatory. My ex-wife reminds me I never owned a Buick. This is the odyssey of recollection.' [Closes book]

Louis de Pointe du Lac: The tapes are an admitted performance. This is the premise of our interview. Half a century later, allow me my odyssey. [Daniel throws away the tapes of their first interview] Now who's performing?

Lestat de Lioncourt: We had a good run, but I did it for Louis. I do everything for Louis.

Antoinette: Yeah, I heard that about you two.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Oh? What have you heard?

Antoinette: I'm not a gossip.

Lestat de Lioncourt: But I am.

Antoinette: Well, people at the Azalea, they say... [Lestat runs his hands along Antoinette's waist] You're confusing me. [Laughs]

Lestat de Lioncourt: Oh, come now. I don't bite. What do the employees of the Azalea say about Louis and Lestat?

Antoinette: I'll answer with a question. Are there two beds upstairs or one?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Do you want to find out?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: No one goes upstairs, Miss Brown.

Antoinette: Well, there's my answer.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Still, what do you imagine confines us to a single note? Why not a chord? Why not a cluster?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Many streets in New Orleans weren't paved at the time. The mud on his boots could've come from anywhere.

Daniel Molloy: Was it raining that night? [Louis recalls his conversation with Jonah without rain] Did it rain?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Recalling his conversation with Jonah again, this time with rain] I don't remember now. It could've been dry in the bayou and wet in the Quarter. It's Louisiana.

Daniel Molloy: The odyssey of recollection.

Daniel Molloy: You were the prince of your district. Lestat chased an American icon out of town because he loved you. 1917 doesn't sound like it was such a bad year.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Rigged to burn, Daniel.

Antoinette: Mr. Louis, you have to convince Lestat to keep playin'.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Got a better chance makin' the Mississippi run north.

Lestat de Lioncourt: We had a good run, but I did it for Louis. I do everything for Louis.

Lestat de Lioncourt: We'll be together ten thousand nights, a hundred thousand. What we're doing is hard. Anything that wards off the dungs of the everlasting road we walk, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of the kill, for me. Pleasures of the good book by the fire for you.

Alderman Fenwick: What are you?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I'm a vampire!

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Reading about Louis's grisly murder of Alderman Fenwick in the paper] I must confess, I'm very proud of you, Louis. It goes against much of my teaching, but you managed to execute it with such aplomb.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Referring to the murder of Alderman Fenwick and the ensuing riots] I didn't do it for me. I did it for my city, my people. Destroy our businesses and buy the land for cheaper. I know what they're doing!

Lestat de Lioncourt: So that torturous death was for your people? That garish display of his body like some public art piece was for your people?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I didn't see this comin'.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Save that lie for yourself. Did you not smile when he begged? Did you not feel pleasure as you carved him up?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Maybe you saw it comin' and didn't stop me. Maybe you went quiet on purpose.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You did what you did because it gave you pleasure. Companion of the Dark Gift, finally. We should make this our anniversary.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I ran from the Quarter that night. Ran to where the violence spread most wild. I stumbled through the streets like an irrational child who had tested his strength on a small bird and now asked, 'Can I make it whole again?' Their faces raced past me like snow in a terrible wind, unaware that it was I who had brought this retribution, it was I who should pay for this sin. And then... one of those inconceivable moments where who you were before and who you'll be forever after is marked in time. A rooming house, now a fire trap. I could not save the Azalea. I could not save Storyville. I could not save the aunt on the wrong side of the wall, but I could save her. My light. My Claudia. My redemption.

"...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding" [1.02]

Rashid: How is your reading coming along?

Daniel Molloy: For a killing machine, I kinda like her.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Forcing Claudia to watch at Charlie in the incinerator] Stop squirming and watch. Remember this, his face as it melts. This is why we don't get close to mortals. Because sooner or later, they end up dead.

Claudia: How does it work, love between two men?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It works like... I don't know. Works like love.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I'm not sure how I feel about that pleated skirt.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's chiffon. It has movement.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Now here's a treat I think you're ready for. This is what the meat calls a 'lover's lane,' and by my estimation, no blood is sweeter. Young people, swollen with passion, denied spirits by this senseless prohibition, park along this lonely stretch to contemplate that most mysterious of mathematical equations -- how one plus one... becomes one.

Claudia: They come out here to do math?

Lestat de Lioncourt: You've been too sheltered, my belladonnic beauty.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: We need to talk about the house.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Scoffs] Over the cold body of our mama. Was wonderin' why I got an invite this time.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: You don't need it. You haven't needed it for years.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Well, good we've got each other's backs. [To his mother's body] Make you proud, you hear?

Levi: We can pay you in installments.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: You and your white daddy are doing fine in the Quarter. We can't pay you what it's worth and you don't need the money.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Vivid writer, isn't she? A singular style.

Daniel Molloy: Anne Frank meets Stephen King.

"Is My Very Nature That of a Devil" [1.03]

Lestat de Lioncourt: There's a column in here about the history of this lovely square. It says that the man who designed it did so after the Place de Vosges in Paris. I can see that. Used to be called the Place d'Armes. I prefer that. Don't you?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Mm-hmm.

Lestat de Lioncourt: The Louisiana Purchase was signed here. Penny wise, franc foolish.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Say anything about how they used to take runaway slaves, cut their heads off, and pike 'em on the iron gates as a warning?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: When your mother sees the Devil in your eyes, it's a hard assessment to abandon. Am I from the Devil? Is my very nature that of the Devil? I had hedged against the question, but now it completely overwhelmed me.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: So you didn't kill her?

Lestat de Lioncourt: No. She has talents.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Aren't I enough?

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Laughs hysterically]

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Singing] Oh, joy, oh, boy. Where do we go from here...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Not funny.

Lestat de Lioncourt: What can I say? I'm a lot. I'm not perfect.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Scoffs] I knew it. I knew you were there.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Yes.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You jealous?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Yes. I don't like sharing.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: What about Antoinette?

Lestat de Lioncourt: It's different. I don't have feelings for her.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He did me some face and I drove him home!

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Shouts] I heard your hearts dancing!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I can smell her on you.

Lestat de Lioncourt: From time to time, I like a little variety. There. I said it. We're communicating so much better now, no?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: So I can fuck whoever I want?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Of course... Of course! Of course. As long as you come home to me. Of course. [Chuckles]

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Shouting] I heard your hearts dancing!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Shouting] You watched the whole thing like some creeper!

Lestat de Lioncourt: And then I watched you pull over and drain a dog and run down an alleyway for two more rats! This is not a life!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: That's 'cause you took my life!

"... After the Phantoms of Your Former Self" [1.04]

Daniel Molloy: Memory is a monster. We forget. It doesn't.

Lestat de Lioncourt: There is one thing about being a vampire that I most fear above all else... and that is loneliness. You can't imagine the emptiness. A void stretching out for decades at a time. You take this feeling away from me, Louis. We must stay together and take precaution... and never part.

[As Daniel is surveying a painting in Louis's apartment]

Rashid: It's Venetian. A contemporary of Tintoretto's.

Daniel Molloy: "Marius de Romanus." Never heard of him.

Rashid: Little of his work survives. Mr. de Pointe du Lac covets the rare.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You'll see as your powers grow, you can see their thoughts, like a one-reeler almost. Dull, monotonous picture shows. It's a very distracting gift, the petty musings of meat.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Peel back on me then. What am I thinkin' right now?

Lestat de Lioncourt: You'll have to tell me yourself. A sacrifice is made when the Dark Gift is shared.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You can't read my mind anymore?

Lestat de Lioncourt: The architects of our creation mean to humble us. We're at the mercy of the other's discretion.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Just like the meat.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You're not one of them anymore, fledgling. You chase after phantoms of your former self. I'll break you of it.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He had a way about him those first years, Lestat. Preternaturally charming, occasionally thoughtful. He was my murderer, my mentor, my lover and my maker -- all of those things at once.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: How many of us are out there? We can't be the only ones.

Lestat de Lioncourt: How many vampires? Not many, I'm afraid. Maybe a hundred... A hundred and one.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: What's happening?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Your body is confused. Your lungs feel like water, your heart, fire. You feel as if you're dying... Because you are.

Lestat de Lioncourt: When I first started learning English, I abhorred it. Every word felt like a doorknob falling out of my mouth. Chapeau was a hat, étoile was a star, a pamplemousse was a grapefruit...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Killin' folks ain't a second language!

Lestat de Lioncourt: ...but, but! When I started dreaming in English, that's when I embraced it. And now I have English consonants to thank for this astonishing jawline.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You should just throw me in the incinerator, make another one.

Lestat de Lioncourt: What a waste that would be. I have two centuries walked this earth and can report, you have no twin. No one as angry, as stubborn, as unaccommodating, as maddening...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Sound like trash to me, as loving, as dedicated, as thoughtful, as imperfectly perfect as you've become. You're a challenge every sunset, Saint Louis, and I'd have it no other way.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: And music, that was where Lestat separated man from food. Music pierced his damned soul, and any humans who were involved in the creation of it existed on an elevated plane in his eyes. I was moved to see he too had his human attachments.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: 'Exceptional Negro.' 'Thank you, sir.' It was the call and response of my entire life. I had let them talk to me like that so long, I stopped hearing it. 'Yes, sir.' 'Of course, sir.' 'Subject-verb agreement, sir.' Smile, nod, 'yes, sir.' They all came from the same organ inside me. An organ unknown to science at the time because what scientist would look for an organ found only in Black men who use their weakness to rise? But I wasn't a man anymore. I was something else. I had powers now and decades of rage to process, and it was both random and unfortunate the man picked that night to dabble in fuckery. If not him, it would've been the next man.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia has expressed an interest in going home.

Grace de Pointe du Lac: It is late for a young lady...

Claudia: The smell is awful.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Hmm. Wakes were invented in places where it snows.

Claudia: How old are you again, Uncle Les?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Hundred and sixty.

Lestat de Lioncourt: A hundred and fifty-nine.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Some sleep is what she needs.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Sedation is what she needs.

Daniel Molloy: So, it begs the question, where were all these diaries in 1973?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Scattered. One in New Orleans, another in Paris.

Daniel Molloy: Bullshit.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Long pause] Claudia was... everything. I loved her unconditionally. All the noise, the chaos, the crisis of my former existence, silenced. The simple joy of her hand in mine.

Daniel Molloy: You had a daughter.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I had a daughter.

Daniel Molloy: I've got two. The love is kind of...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: And if you were to come across their diaries and learn, in detail, how and when you failed them, would you share those failures with a brash young reporter you met at Polynesian Mary's?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Charlie's death ushered in one of the darkest eras in our lives. The oh-so-delicate balance of our oh-so-delicate household was shattered. The fantasy of happiness burst. Claudia was...

Daniel Molloy: A band-aid for a shitty marriage?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I was going to say... something else. But yes, that's almost certainly what she felt like.

Claudia: It's funnier when they fight in French. And, diary, you'd think a girl whose mama died in childbirth, whose daddy gave her away to a mean old auntie who beat her 'cause no one said she couldn't, who died in a fire but came back by the blood magic of two demons, well, you'd think that girl wouldn't know what funny was. But you'd be wrong, diary. And if I told you, dumb diary, that that same girl was being raised to kill like her two demon parents did, to take two souls a day so she can stay in the same flat-chested, hairless-crotched, 14-year-old baby doll body as her mind and spirit turn 19, 20, 25, 63, 358, you dumb, dumb diary, I'd bet you'd say to anyone who'd listen, 'Fun? Fun? How does she even get up in the morning?' Well, let me tell you something, you stuck-up, flower-covered, three-dollar, fancy fuckin' paper diary, I'm doin' just fine. And how do I know that? 'Cause the first man I killed called me the Devil, and the last boy I killed, the last boy I'll ever love in this world, called me an angel. So that means I'm on the right path. And that means there's so much more fun out there to have. I'm just gettin' started.

Claudia: [To Louis] He treats us like shit and you take it! Why is that? [To Lestat] And you, cruel as the Devil ever made, to refuse me one love when you've got two! [Scoffs] White girl, down in Algiers, sings torch songs with a flat, no-nothin' ass. Been following you, Uncle Les. You ain't been your careful self. [To Louis] He's gotten tired of us, Daddy Lou. The housewife and the mistake.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: As the Depression set in on the nation, I barricaded myself within the dilapidating walls of 1132 Rue Royale, educating myself from Lestat's library, ignoring all other duties of the role Claudia once mocked me for... the unhappy housewife.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You draw me into your gloom.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's your fault she's gone. If you hadn't pushed her...

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: If you hadn't done your...

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia. Claudia. [Scoffs] I cannot listen to this insanity about Claudia one more time. Bordel de merde. Il me chie dans la malle jusqu'au cadenas!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Reading from Claudia's diary] I spend time following Louis and Lestat, now that I am my own woman, with no obvious sense of why I follow them, other than meaning slowly disintegrates without them, my companions in immortality. But today at the cemetery, I finally understood something so obvious, which I had pondered for a decade--why they made me... To be Louis's sister.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Emotionally, I was vacant. I longed for Claudia. I ached for her. I walked the streets of New Orleans with the shifting masses of the unfed, the addicts born of despair, sending out telepathic thoughts of remorse in every direction. But she had shut her mind off to me for some time then. And so I was left to revisit old haunts, desperate for connection. 'Claudia, come home.' 'I know I hurt you.' 'I know I can make it right again.'

Daniel Molloy: Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Is that all you think of her?

Daniel Molloy: Mostly. I also think she makes you an Frenchy look like a couple of whiny, existential queens. Probably why she's a fuckin' gold mine. The girl who moves a million books.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I won't have her exploited.

Daniel Molloy: Won't matter what your intentions are. It's the world out there now. She's the single-shooter, Xbox, mouth-breather shit they crave.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You can put the diaries in a proper context.

Daniel Molloy: Context. Sure. Warn the world about a forthcoming apocalypse. Or maybe inspire a line of sexy Claudia Halloween costumes. Or a cool dismemberment trend amongst the suburban Sylvia Plath set. Once you put it out there, they decide what it is. It can get away from you.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Flaubert's style is so dense.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis Armstrong's in town tonight, playing at the Pelican. Should we make it a night of the two Louis?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: The absence of metaphor is so striking.

Lestat de Lioncourt: You sound like every pompous Sorbonne student I've ever eaten.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Should I do like you instead? Read the first ten pages of every book? Pass myself off as cultured?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Well, at least you're listening. I sit there thinking, 'Light yourself on fire, see if he would notice!'

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Talking over Lestat] Use my middling command of literary canon to impress some hapless human I'm gonna kill in a few hours anyway.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Reading aloud a newspaper article] 'Rash of mysterious deaths at university libraries perplex authorities.' Listen to this. 'Housekeeping staff at Vanderbilt University tried to rouse students who appeared to have fallen asleep at their studies, only to discover that they were, in fact, deceased. Similar incidents have been recorded at the College of Charleston, Lincoln University in Jefferson City, and the University of Alabama.' It's her. It has to be her.

Lestat de Lioncourt: It could be her. But I am the one who is presently standing in front of you. And, unlike Claudia, I am a full-blooded adult with all the right appendages. So if my considerable considerables continue to be squandered... [Lestat storms out with Louis continuing reading]

Lestat de Lioncourt: She was a destitute little girl, destined to live an inconsequential little life.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: And we took it from her. We cursed her.

Lestat de Lioncourt: How was college? Magna cum? Summa cum? Phi Beta Kappa?

Claudia: I've read a lot of books. Started with Persia and Babylon, the old gods who longed for blood. A lot of it was popcorn, but a few old tomes. A Romanian tract on 'vampirs.' A strange, old Hungarian text, 'Masticatione Mortuorum,' the 'chewing dead.' I plan to leave for that part of the world as soon as I can.

Lestat de Lioncourt: So... quick stop home to do laundry before you fuck off for good.

Claudia: A quick stop to pick up Louis.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Perused a few folklore anthologies, and now you're going to cross the ocean and take on a society of monsters.

Claudia: If what I read is lies, then tell me what's true. [Lestat stares without answering and Claudia scoffs] Seven years and what's changed, other than you need a housekeeper?

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Dragging Louis by the throat] I fought myself a million times, fought my nature, controlled my temper. I never once harmed you.

Claudia: Uncle Les!

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Stops] It's 'Uncle Les' now suddenly?

Claudia: Let him go! He didn't do nothin'! Let him go! It's me you want!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Listen to me, and listen very carefully, my infant death. It was never you! [To Louis] I chose you! [Bites Louis's neck and flies off with him]

Lestat de Lioncourt: The vampires out there are vicious. [Observing Claudia's facial expression] Oh... but you've learned that already. Who did you meet out there in the American hinterland? Read her, Louis.

Claudia: That's it, keep him scared. [To Louis] That's his way.

Lestat de Lioncourt: The vampires in Europe are much, much worse.

Claudia: [To Louis] But I think *he's* scared.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I never asked. How did Charlie taste? Like the love you'll never really know?

Claudia: [To Louis] And when he's scared, he ridicules.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Holding a bleeding and beaten Louis while hovering in the air thousands of miles above New Orleans] I have waited, Louis. I have patiently waited, in vain, for you to love me as I love you. Just say it. Say, 'Lestat, I am never going to love you.' It would help me a great deal to hear that from your lips. Your quivering, hateful lips.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Let go of me!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Anything for you. [Lets go of Louis, who plummets to the ground]

Lestat de Lioncourt: I have waited, Louis. I have patiently waited in vain... for you to love me... as I love you. Just say it. Say, 'Lestat, I am never going to love you.' It would help me a great deal to hear that from your lips... your quivering, hateful lips.

"A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart" [1.05]

[Claudia returns home after seven years]

Lestat de Lioncourt: The prodigal daughter.

Claudia: I've come to apologize. I put you both in a bad spot. I wasn't right in my head. I am now.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Apology not accepted.

[Lestat and Claudia fight over Louis]

Claudia: [Telepathically] Come with me! Come with me, Louis!

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis...

Claudia: [Aloud] I thought I could live without you, but I was wrong.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis. [Shouts] Louis!

Claudia: [Telepathically] His love is a small box he keeps you in. Don't stay in it.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Shouting] A thousand nights of sulking, and the first sight of her, you are just gonna up and leave me?

Claudia: [Shouting aloud] Please, come with me! Let's meet vampires worthy of your love!

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Reading aloud from Claudia's diary] 'Dear diary, am I gonna be a virgin every single time I do it? Won't my skin down there grow back like my hair does when I cut it?'

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Jesus.

Deputy Habersham: Now, it is my sworn duty to notify the dry agents as to the wine cellar on the premises. I will refrain from contacting the Child Welfare League, but I don't like what I've seen in this home.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: And we'll make sure Police Chief Bardeen is informed how his men conducted themselves in the home of law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.

Deputy Habersham: [Chuckles] You know, I'd add a second bed to the boudoir before you two go making accusations. I have no doubt you could carry the fines, but crimes against nature, that comes with a five-year prison term if convicted.

Claudia: Who am I supposed to love? You two have each other? Who's my Lestat? Who's my Louis? I'm not human. What human would want me? Perverts? Like the uncle at the roomin' house who used to watch me pee? Or little boys? And forty years from now, still little boys? [Shouts] How you gonna fix it, huh? Which one of you gonna fuck me?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Well, you're not my type. I like a fuller figure.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Lestat!

Lestat de Lioncourt: She's being impossible!

Rashid: What do you think will happen to Mr. du Lac when you publish this book and the other vampires of the world get their hands on it?

Daniel Molloy: As long as they pay full freight.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: It's been months. Her meals are too meager. What if you bring one of your kills into her room? We could tie him up next to the coffin...

Lestat de Lioncourt: She's not surviving on birds or nocturnals, Louis. She waits for that slither of time when I'm on the hunt and you've gone round the back to make nice with the rat catcher.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Or she's slowly starving herself.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Bon. I know what I'd do, but you've cut my hands off. My parenting is...

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Sadistic?

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Chuckles] ... so save your words when it comes to Claudia.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: She's in there 'cause of you.

Lestat de Lioncourt: [Slams the piano keys] Ça suffit!

Lestat de Lioncourt: You wanted her, you fix her!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: We're doin' this together.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Do you remember our life, how happy we were before her?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Happy? We were not happy!

Lestat de Lioncourt: An anvil tied around our ankles pulling us towards the pitch-black ocean floor!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I had no words for her. What words were there? 'It all happened so fast.' 'I was trying to save you.' 'All vampires are born out of trauma.' We made her out of remorse. Out of selfishness.

Daniel Molloy: Poor dear. She wasn't held enough between ritualistic murders.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: She spent every night for half a decade with no friends, locked in the emotional storm of puberty.

Daniel Molloy: Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Is that all you think of her?

Daniel Molloy: Mostly. I also think she makes you and Frenchy look like a couple of whiny, existential queens.

Claudia: Why can't I make one? No matter how much blood I give them, they just lie there gaspin'.

Lestat de Lioncourt: What is this? Look at me! What have you done?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Did you try to make another?

Claudia: Boy from Ponchatoula. Boy from Hollygrove. Boy with a bow tie out in Algiers.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Claudia, how'd you figure this was gon' go?

Claudia: [To Lestat] Make me one.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Because you turned out so well.

Claudia: 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna go out there and find other vampires.

Lestat de Lioncourt: If you could find them, which you won't, they would shred you to strips, because you are built like a bird, because you are a mistake!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Voiceover] Claudia's night rambles had exposed us.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Assume we are under suspicion. Assume our finances no longer provide us protection.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Make your kills outside the city. One a night. No persons of note--unfortunates, undesirables.

Lestat de Lioncourt: No more incinerator. New locks on the doors. Shutter the windows. No parties, no friends.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [voiceover] But her absence would lay bare who we were without her, a simmering pot of resentments.

Lestat de Lioncourt: We should leave the city, start anew, turn a betrayal into an opportunity. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Paris.

Lestat de Lioncourt: No.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Mm-hmm.

Lestat de Lioncourt: We should dismantle her room.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You don't touch her room. She'll be back.

Lestat de Lioncourt: No, she won't.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Voiceover] There would be no Roaring Twenties for us. We would be underground for seven years.

"Like Angels Put in Hell by God" [1.06]

Claudia: Massa's had so much loss in his life. Lord couldn't ask him to bear any more.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: In many ways, they were more like each other than they wanted to admit. They both sought out weakness.They reveled in the exploitation of it, and they romped with joy as I played audience to their joyless exchange

Lestat de Lioncourt: I played three games at once in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and one of my opponents was Johannes Zukertort,

Lestat de Lioncourt: Oh, it's you who lost, Claudia, for the many hundredth time. I admire your steadfast pursuit of a game you clearly have no acumen for.

Claudia: My massa taught me how to play, but only enough to occupy his time.

Claudia: Poor massa and his pain. It's an honor just to sleep under massa's roof.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Are we the sum of our worst moments? Can we be forgiven if we do not forgive others ourselves?

Lestat de Lioncourt: She's an affected, self-absorbed, nasty little creature who's fooled herself into thinking she's smarter than she is and she is poisoning Louis against me.

Antoinette: You don't need her and you don't need him. They don't appreciate you like I do.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I have given her so many gifts, so many incalculable gifts. And you're right, it is *both* of them. He broods. She snipes. That's why I need you. You fortify me against them.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis, I don't know what possessed me that night.

Claudia: Three years ago. That night three years ago, he means.

Lestat de Lioncourt: I was someone I don't want to be anymore. I've changed. Let me prove it to you. I'm nothing without you. I'm nothing without both of you. If you want me to go away, just say so. I'll obey you. I'll leave your life forever. [Louis doesn't answer]

Lestat de Lioncourt: This silence is cruel. And you were never cruel, Louis.

Claudia: Let me go, Lestat.

Lestat de Lioncourt: In Louis' hour of need? I'm afraid I can't allow that. He's very fragile right now. Worse than the last time you abandoned him, when you filled your head with knowledge and hitched a ride on a motorbike.

Claudia: We're his slaves, and I will free us both.

Claudia: He picked you over me.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis couldn't pick an apple off a tree in his current state.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia... you left, without saying goodbye. Again. I'm sure it was an oversight, but still. You'd think your creator had earned the courtesy.

Claudia: You didn't want me. You made me for Louis.

Lestat de Lioncourt: And he needs you now more than ever. He's in a terrible state.

Claudia: He said I could go. He picked you over me.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis couldn't pick an apple off a tree in his current state. He'd grip it, tug at it, then, weak as he is, the stem would hold.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Is your medicine taking?

Daniel Molloy: It's cold and itchy. Thanks for asking.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Are you still dreaming about our first meeting, Daniel?

Daniel Molloy: I keep waking up just before you ask me back to your shitty apartment.

Daniel Molloy: Hey, Doc, did you know there's a flying vampire apocalypse coming your way?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Most vampires do not possess the Cloud Gift. With few exceptions, only the most ancient of us have it.

Daniel Molloy: You know he's a vampire, right?

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: I do not discuss my patients with anyone but the patients themselves.

Daniel Molloy: [to the recorder] That's the voice of Dr. Fareer Bhansali...

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: That is not my voice.

Daniel Molloy: ...He's the personal physician to the deputy prime minister and...

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: And I am not here.

Daniel Molloy: ...the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac.

Rashid: He's officially off the record.

Daniel Molloy: NDAs signed by any and all who cross the threshold, eh?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: For six years in all, these raw and desperate mea culpas came like the tide. And for six years, they were greeted with silence or fire. We burned more gifts than bodies in that decade, but they would not stop coming. And Lestat's relentless determination began to crack my considerable armor. Perhaps it was the modesty of the gesture, but in the spring of 1937, one broke through. He had written it himself in the music of the hour. His first composition in a hundred years.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I loved Claudia with all my heart and I loved Lestat with a wounded one. The work would be convincing the two to find room again for each other.

Daniel Molloy: Can you fly, Louis?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: No.

Daniel Molloy: So for twenty years, you lived with the vampire Lestat and you didn't know he had the flying gift?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: The Cloud Gift. And yes, it was a remarkable bit of restraint he managed.

Daniel Molloy: Why would he do that?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I suppose he thought if he exposed all his power to me, I would never feel his equal and the relationship would suffer.

Daniel Molloy: 'He only beat me the one time, Officer. It's not his fault.' Classic Stockholm, eh, Doc?

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: I am not here.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: She's coming up on 33.

Lestat de Lioncourt: It's a lick and a promise in vampire years.

Claudia: Maybe, but I'm not your child anymore. That's rule number five. I'll be your companion, your sister.

Lestat de Lioncourt: It's not as simple as choosing a new family configuration. 'Now I'm your cousin.' 'Now I'm your aunt.' I am your maker!

Claudia: But not my uncle or my daddy. I'm your sister or that's the door.

[Louis bursts into Antoinette's house to find her and Lestat naked in bed]

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Shouting] Six years of begging. You think a song's gon' get a rise out of me?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Did you like it?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: This her singing?

Lestat de Lioncourt: It's a clear voice. I wanted to obstacle to the lyric. [Louis smashes the record]

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Write me a song and put your lover's voice on it? What the fuck is wrong with your head?

Lestat de Lioncourt: Louis, you're soaking wet.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I swim faster than I drive. [To Antoinette] Put some clothes on. Get the fuck out.

Antoinette: This is my house.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Do I look like I care?

Antoinette: Lestat.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Leave. [To Louis] You swam the Mississippi to find me?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I hate you.

Lestat de Lioncourt: As you should.

Daniel Molloy: He could fly?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Yes.

Daniel Molloy: Like Superman?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Not like Superman. Superman is a fictional character.

Daniel Molloy: But in the air with a 'fuck you to Newtonian physics' flying?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He said it was more like floating, arising at will, propelling in a direction by the decision. He called it 'the Cloud Gift.'

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia, hello. I've been calling quite often. I don't know if the operator is patching me through correctly. [Claudia stares without answering]

Lestat de Lioncourt: I brought something from Louis's favorite bookshop. 'The Book of Hours.' Extremely rare, 15th century. Silver and gold on the vellum, palettes of blue and old rose.

Claudia: No one here wishes to speak with you.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Well, I know he's upstairs. I can see his silhouette. Perhaps we should let him decide if he wants to see me or not. [Louis throws Lestat's coffin off the balcony and it shatters on the street behind Lestat]

Claudia: How's that for an answer?

Claudia: Who made you?

Lestat de Lioncourt: His name was Magnus. He took me from my room in Paris as I kicked and screamed. He kept me for a week, locked in a room full of corpses. Some freshly killed, some bloated and black. But they all looked like me -- my coloring, my physique, my own eyes staring back at me from rotting faces. He fed on me every night and then he put me back in the tower with the lookalike corpses. I thought for sure I'd be one of them, but instead he turned me into this. No grand history of vampiric origins or physiology, no rules, no counsel. Just a sweeping hand to a pile of money and the sight of him throwing himself into a fire. And then I was alone. I thought, 'I can't drink hot blood. I can't feed on others.' I cried. I called to God. I didn't want this. But I have a capacity for enduring. That's why I don't particularly like being abandoned.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Finds out that Lestat didn't kill Antoinette] It wasn't shocking. It was perfectly consistent with his nature. He'd been told to do something, and, brat that he was, didn't like being told what to do. The effect, however, was numbing.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You're ugly when you act like that.

Claudia: Better ugly than blind.

Claudia: 'I Felt a Funeral in My Brain.' She also wrote one called 'A Coffin Is a Small Domain.' I mean, come on!

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Emily Dickinson is not a vampire.

Claudia: How do you know?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Cause she's dead.

Claudia: How do you know?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: She got a grave. She got a tombstone.

Claudia: So do you.

Lestat de Lioncourt: She's an affected, self-absorbed, nasty little creature who's fooled herself into thinking she's smarter than she is, and she is poisoning Louis against me.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Years accumulated in the small city were catching up to us. Our home was often vandalized. Cowardly warnings suggesting we were no longer welcome. 'Please return from the dark place you came from.' It was an awkward time. I loved Claudia with all my heart and I loved Lestat with a wounded one. The work would be convincing the two to find room again for each other. Concessions would be needed. I would have to lead by example.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: For six years in all, these raw and desperate mea culpas came like the tide. And for six years, they were greeted with silence or fire. We burned more gifts than bodies in that decade, but they would not stop coming. And Lestat's relentless determination began to crack my considerable armor. Perhaps it was the modesty of the gesture... but in the spring of 1937, one broke through. He had written it himself in the music of the hour. His first composition in 100 years... Rashid, please play the song in question for Mr. Molloy and the doctor.

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: I'm not here.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: [Come to Me plays in the background] He had engaged a local record company. And when the musicians they hired proved unsatisfactory, he played all the instruments himself.

Daniel Molloy: That's his voice?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Yeah. He pressed only one album. Had the master recordings destroyed. You're listening to an inferior re-recording now. The audacity of it all was matched only by its sincerity. He had made the near-perfect valentine... with one flaw. One perfectly premeditated flaw.

Dr. Fareed Bhansali: Pleasure never meeting you, Mr. Molloy.

Daniel Molloy: He said to no one.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Quick and clever despite two bags of fluid.

Daniel Molloy: Legal dope makes me constipated, but the wit flows like a river.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Dark woods and bridged rivers. Then the lights of a city depot. Birmingham. Atlanta. Greensboro. Washington, D.C. She, of all things on the Earth, deserved a nice seat and a wide window to watch the countryside blur before the glass. But it was 1939, and the only Negro allowed in first class was the porter, and the Negro passenger rode the rear. The Negro vampire made do with what was left, which was fine with her.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I teased the sun that night in Jackson Square. Thought about the walking cane and pile of ash they'd find in the morning. But Paul had forever ruined Grace's wedding night, and I would not do the same to Claudia on the anniversary of her escape. If I was to join Dante's Wood of the Self-Murdered, it would be another night. And so I endured my way home, back to the crypt, back to the undeserving Lestat.

Lestat de Lioncourt: Claudia... you left! Without saying goodbye. Again.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: This is the part of my story, back in San Francisco, where you said, and I paraphrase, 'Give it to me. Make me a vampire now.'

Daniel Molloy: In the eyes of a 20-year-old, you were wasting the gift.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: You're in your twenties, Rashid. What do you think?

Rashid: Well, Mr. du Lac presides in the most desired real estate in the country. I do not see the waste Mr. Molloy sees.

Daniel Molloy: Yeah, well, he lived in a dump the last time we did this.

Claudia: [Crying] Let me go, Lestat.

Lestat de Lioncourt: In Louis hour of need? I'm afraid I can't allow that. He's very fragile right now. Worse than the last time you abandoned him, when you filled your head with knowledge and hitched a ride on a motorbike. [Claudia shudders] Well, you wouldn't talk of it. Louis insisted I not ask. I love our family, but the rules are, 'No secrets!' Fortunate for our family, when I put my mind to it, I can hear the thoughts of other vampires at a very great distance.

Claudia: Bastard.

Lestat de Lioncourt: He thinks of you often... Bruce.

Claudia: Fucking bastard!

Lestat de Lioncourt: I couldn't agree more. What he did to you was in very poor taste. Could you imagine if something like that happened to you again? Louis would never forgive himself. Back in your cage, sweetheart. We endure each other for Louis' happiness. So come home, and make him happy. Because if you try this again, Claudia, I won't snap your leg, defile your pocket and zoom off on a motorbike. I'll turn your bones to dust.

Claudia: [Conversing telepathically with Louis] I've been having a thought the last few days, Louis.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Yeah, what's that?

Claudia: I think he killed Magnus. I think the vampire made him a slave. And he would be a slave no more than I would, and so he killed him. Killed him before he knew all the things he could've known. And now he's gone and made us slaves to him.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: We're not slaves. Maybe mindless accomplices.

Claudia: No, we're his slaves, and I will free us both.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Claudia.

Claudia: We have no more use for him, and he causes us misery with no horizon.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I don't like what you're feeling right now. You can't kill...

Claudia: I love you, Louis. I don't say it often enough anymore.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: If you love me, then listen to me. I beg you.

Claudia: If you're going to beat Lestat, you have to become Lestat. You have to think like he does and then five moves ahead of that.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: But he's not mortal. No illness can touch him. You threaten a life that will endure until the end of the world.

Claudia: I am done enduring. I'm going to kill him.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He'll destroy you if you try it.

Claudia: No, Louis. I can kill him... And I want to tell you something else now, a secret of all secrets, between you and me... The secret is, Louis, you want to kill him too and you will enjoy doing it.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: She was right. It was inevitable. We were going to kill Lestat.

Young Daniel Molloy: Are you a narc?

Louis de Pointe du Lac: I'm a vampire. [Both laugh]

Young Daniel Molloy: I want to interview you.

Louis de Pointe du Lac: Sounds fun.