How old are you again, Uncle Les?
Hundred and sixty.
A hundred and fifty-nine.
All S1
S1 E15Unfinished Business
Some sleep is what she needs.
Sedation is what she needs.
So, it begs the question, where were all these diaries in 1973?
Scattered. One in New Orleans, another in Paris.
Bullshit.
[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.
You had a daughter.
I had a daughter.
I've got two. The love is kind of...
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?
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...
A band-aid for a shitty marriage?
I was going to say... something else. But yes, that's almost certainly what she felt like.
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.
[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.
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.
You draw me into your gloom.
It's your fault she's gone. If you hadn't pushed her...
Claudia.
If you hadn't done your...
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!
[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.
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.'
Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.
Is that all you think of her?
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.
I won't have her exploited.
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.
You can put the diaries in a proper context.
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.
Flaubert's style is so dense.
Louis Armstrong's in town tonight, playing at the Pelican. Should we make it a night of the two Louis?
The absence of metaphor is so striking.
You sound like every pompous Sorbonne student I've ever eaten.
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!'
[Talking over Lestat] Use my middling command of literary canon to impress some hapless human I'm gonna kill in a few hours anyway.
[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.
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]
She was a destitute little girl, destined to live an inconsequential little life.
And we took it from her. We cursed her.
How was college? Magna cum? Summa cum? Phi Beta Kappa?
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.
So... quick stop home to do laundry before you fuck off for good.
A quick stop to pick up Louis.
Perused a few folklore anthologies, and now you're going to cross the ocean and take on a society of monsters.
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?
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Interview with the Vampire pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.