quotations about vampires
The traits of modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They have fangs, drink human blood, and can't see themselves in mirrors. They can be warded off with garlic, or killed with a stake through the heart. Some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles. But vampires didn't start out so clearly defined. Scholars suspect that the modern conception of these Halloween monsters evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe. These beliefs centered around the fear that the dead, once buried, could still harm the living. Often, these legends arose from a misunderstanding of how bodies decompose. As a corpse's skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark "purge fluid" can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living.
BECKY LITTLE
"The Bloody Truth About Vampires", National Geographic, October 26, 2016
Well, vampires are evergreen. Every 10 or 15 years there's something about vampires. There is a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Then it'll be quiet for a while, and then we'll have UNDERWORLD, and then it goes quiet, and then there's a TRUE BLOOD, and then it goes quiet.
DONNY CATES
"An Interview with Donny Cates, Creator of REDNECK", ComicsVerse, April 29, 2017
The vampire is an outsider. He's the perfect metaphor for those things. He's someone who looks human and sounds human, but is not human, so he's always on the margins.
ANNE RICE
interview, The Daily Beast, November 23, 2011
The vampire does appear in literature right at the time the Reformation is gaining ascendancy, and he certainly does represent the old Catholic Europe. I'm sure my own vampires are seen as embodying the magic of my childhood Catholicism. They have the power of saints. They can work miracles and transcend time.
ANNE RICE
attributed, Anne Rice Reader
Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves.
ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
The world is a vampire, sent to drain
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain?
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
SMASHING PUMPKINS
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
The fact of the matter is, if vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted to in movies and folklore, then the human race would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared.
COSTAS EFTHIMIOU & SOHANG GANDHI
"Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality: Ghosts, Vampires and Zombies"
Sudden as a knife you thrust
into my sorry heart
and strong as a host of demons came,
gaudy and libertine,
to make in my corrupted mind
your bed and bedlam there;
Beast, who bind me to you close
as convict to his chains.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"The Vampire"
I'm looking for someone to quench my thirst-for all eternity.
ELLEN SCHREIBER
Vampireville
If there's one thing real vampires seem to have in common, it is their reluctance to tell the world about who, and what, they are.
KIM WALL
"Interview with a real-life vampire: why drinking blood isn't like in Hollywood", The Guardian, August 15, 2015
Among the many people who have wondered if garlic really does protect against vampires are Nobel Prize laureates Hogne Sandivik and Anders Baebeim, who conducted a satirical scientific study to seek the truth of the matter. Owing to a lack of vampires willing to participate in their study, they substituted leeches. In strictly standardized research surroundings, the leeches were to attach themselves either to a hand smeared with garlic or to a clean hand. The results of the study showed that the leeches, in two out of three cases, preferred the garlic-smeared hand. Therefore, the researchers theorized, the traditional belief that garlic has prophylactic properties against vampires is probably wrong. The reverse may in fact be true. So, to keep vampires out of Norway (where the experiment was conducted), the scientists recommended that restrictions on the use of garlic should be considered.
VICTORIA RENOUX
For the Love Of ... Garlic: The Complete Guide to Garlic Cuisine
I think I should warn you all, when a vampire bites it, it's never a pretty sight. No two bloodsuckers go the same way. Some yell and scream, some go quietly, some explode, some implode, but all will try to take you with them.
EDGAR FROG
The Lost Boys
What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire?
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
hey black dress moves in a blue movie graverobbers from outer space well, your pulmonary trembles in your outstretched arm tremble so wicked two inch nails micro waist with a pale white feline face inclination eyebrows to there mistress to the horror kid cemetary of the white love ghoul, well take off your shabby dress come and lay beside me come a little bit closer come a little bit closer come a little bit closer come a little bit closer to this vampira, vampira, vampira hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
MISFITS
"Vampira"
I've got a baby vampire in me,
nobody knows, nobody knows.
I saw you put it in me like a seed
that was as big as a stone.
And all I can do is watch it grow
and it comes and it goes.
It comes and it goes
and it's turning me into someone I don't know.
HELIUM
"Baby Vampire Made Me"
I'm a vampire, babe,
suckin' blood
from the earth
I'm a vampire, baby,
suckin' blood
from the earth.
Well, I'm a vampire, babe,
sell you twenty barrels worth.
Good times are comin'.
NEIL YOUNG
"Vampire Blues"
Give me the chance to dance romance
Don't run, I'm not the sun
So much at stake ... oh!
Bad choice of words
OUTKAST
"Dracula's Wedding"
There's something about death. It's like trying to understand our own mortality and immortality. That's why society is so into things like vampires, because they don't die.
SHERYL LEE
Los Angeles Times, 1991
Vampires are purposely seductive -- they are feminine in their flirtatious, provocative behavior and yet aggressively masculine in satisfying their needs.
CAROLINE JOAN PICART & CECIL E. GREEK
Monsters in and Among Us
My vampires Lestat and Louis and Armand, they look more like angels than the feral Dracula. And they're not repulsive like Dracula, they're very seductive and beautiful. To me that added to the drama, to the tragic dilemma of the vampire, that immortality in the form of a vampire gave him so much power, and so many gifts, and so much charm and glamour.
ANNE RICE
interview, Lightspeed Magazine, June 2012