Lestat: Don't be afraid. I'm going to give you the choice I never had.
[to Malloy]
Lestat: I assume I need no introduction.
Armand: They had forgotten the first lesson, that we are to 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, 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: Why? So you can have that too? The heart that mourns her, her that you burnt to a cinder.
Armand: Louis, I swear that I...
Louis: Ah, but I know you did. I know. You, who regrets nothing, you, who feels nothing. If that's all I have left to learn, I can do that on my own.
Louis: 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, and she and the infant had been buried less than half a year. I would have 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 it.
Lestat: Listen, Louis. There's life in these old hands still. Not quite Furioso. Moderato? Cantabile, perhaps.
Claudia: How can it be?
Lestat: Ask the alligator. His blood helped. Then on a diet of the blood of snakes, toads, and all the putrid life of the Mississippi, slowly, Lestat became something like himself again. Claudia...
You've been a very, very, naughty little girl.
Claudia: Where's mama?
Lestat: Mama... mama has gone to heaven, Chérie, like that sweet lady right there. They all go to heaven.
Louis: All but us.
Lestat: Shh. Do you want to frighten our little daughter?
Claudia: I'm not your daughter.
Lestat: Oh, yes, you
are. You're mine and Louis' daughter now. You see, Louis was going to leave us, he was going to go away, but now he's not. Now, he's going to stay and make you happy.
Claudia: Louis.
Louis: You fiend.
Lestat: One happy family.
Lestat: The trick is not to think about it. See that one there? Widow St. Clair. She had the gorgeous young fop murder her husband.
Louis: How do you know?
Lestat: Read her thoughts.
[Louis looks at him inquisitively]
Lestat: *Read* her thoughts.
Louis: [attempts to read her
thoughts] I can't.
Lestat: The dark gift is different for each of us. But one thing is true for us all, we grow stronger as we go along. Just take my word for it. She blamed a slave for his murder. Imagine what they did to him. Evildoers are easier, and they taste better.
Claudia: Locked together in hatred. But I can't hate you, Louis. Louis, my love, I was mortal till 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: You... fed on me.
Louis: Yes. And he found me with you, and he cut his wrist and fed you from it, and you were a vampire and have been every night thereafter.
Claudia: You both did it.
Louis: [crying] I took your life... He gave you another one.
Claudia: And here it is, and I
hate you both.
Louis: Bear me no ill will, my love, we are now even.
Claudia: What do you mean?
Louis: What died in that room was not that woman. What has died is the last breath in me that was human.
Claudia: Yes, Father. At last we are even.
Louis: Her blood coursed through my veins, sweeter than life itself. And as it did, Lestat's words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed and when I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.
Louis: 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 sunrise 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.