I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

We need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.

I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it.

Memnoch the Devil happen to be my favorite of all The Vampire Chronicles.

I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I've always felt that I wasn't a member of any particular group.

Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.

What I did was take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and sought to make Him utterly believable, a vital breathing character.

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.

Invest in a feather duster - the possibilities are endless.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.

I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets.

The only pain in pleasure is the pleasure of the pain.

I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

Dickens is a very underrated writer at the moment. Everyone in his time admired him but I think right now he's not spoken of enough.

Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

Obviously, a writer can't know everything about what she writes. It's impossible.

I wish we had more visible Christian and Catholic leaders who talked about love.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

I do not read the ancient languages, but I am beginning to study Greek.

You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

I do want to go another way - to write something completely different.

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?

I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.

I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I've always had a very close relationship with them.

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?

I'm fascinated by almost any mythology that I can get my hands on.

We're frightened of what makes us different.

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.

I'm always looking, and I'm always asking questions.

I want to love all the children of God - Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist - everyone. I want to love gay Christians and straight Christians.

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.

My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

I broke with my religion in college.

You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

I can't keep up with Stephen King's output.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

I'm going to keep on dealing with the supernatural in a lot of ways.