Daniel Molloy quotes from Interview with the Vampire

Daniel Molloy

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

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.

Daniel Molloy

Memory is a monster. We forget. It doesn't.

Daniel

Paris sucks. Macarons are bullshit, café culture is boring.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.