Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Tom Cruise: Lestat

Photos 

6 more photos

Quotes 

• 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.

• Lestat : Oh Louis, Louis. Still whining, Louis. Have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries.

• 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.

• 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.

• [last lines] 

  Lestat : Don't be afraid... I'm going to give you the choice I never had.

• Louis : Where are we?

  Lestat : Where do you think, my idiot friend? We're in a nice, filthy cemetery. Does this make you happy? Is this fitting, proper enough?

  Louis : We belong in hell.

  Lestat : And what if there is no hell, or they don't want us there? Ever think of that?

  Louis : But there was a hell, and no matter where we moved to, I was in it.

• Lestat : No one could resist me, not even you, Louis.

  Louis : I tried.

  Lestat : [smiling]  And the more you tried, the more I wanted you.

• Lestat : 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.

• 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 : [after Claudia kills the piano teacher]  Claudia, what have we told you?

  Claudia : Never in the house.

• [Claudia has just killed her seamstress] 

  Lestat : Claudia! Claudia! Now who are we going to get to finish your dress? These impracticalities, cherie! Remember: never in the home!

• Claudia : Which one of you did it? One of you did it! Which on of you made me the way I am?

  Lestat : What you are? A vampire gone insane that pollutes its own bed?

  Claudia : And if I cut my hair again?

  Lestat : It will grow back again.

  Claudia : But it wasn't always so. I had a mother once, and Louis, he had a wife. He was mortal the same as she and so was I.

  Louis : Claudia!

  Claudia : You made us what we are, didn't you?

  Lestat : Stop her, Louis.

  Claudia : Did you do it to me?

  [slashes Lestat's face, and it heals immediately] 

  Claudia : How did you do it?

  Lestat : Why should I tell you? It's in my power.

  Claudia : Why yours alone? Tell me how it was done.

  Lestat : Be glad I made you what you are. You'd be dead now if I hadn't, just like that damned corpse. Now, get rid of it!

  Claudia : You get rid of it.

• Lestat : I'm going to give you the choice I never had.

• Lestat : Lord, what I wouldn't give for a drop of good old-fashioned Creole blood.

  Louis : Yankees are not to your taste?

  Lestat : Their democratic flavor doesn't suit my palate, Louis.

• Lestat : Mon dieu, what melancholy nonsense. I swear you grow more like Louis each day. Soon you'll be eating rats!

  Claudia : Rats? When did you eat rats, Louis?

  Louis : It was a long, long time ago. Before you were born, and I don't recommend them.

• Lestat : Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt.

• Lestat : Your body's dying. Pay no attention, it happens to us all.

• Lestat : Claudia... Claudia. Claudia! What have you done?

  Claudia : What you told me to do!

  Louis : Leave a corpse here to rot?

  Claudia : I wanted her. I wanted to be her!

• Lestat : Perfect! Just perfect! Just burn the place! Burn everything we own! Have us sleeping in the field like cattle!

  Louis : You thought you could have it all...

  Lestat : Oh, shut up, Louis! Mon Dieu! Come here.

• Lestat : Should we put out the light? And then put out the light. But once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital breath again. It needs must wither.

• Lestat : Have you said your good-byes to the light?

  [bites Louis] 

  Lestat : I've drained you to the point of death. If I leave you here, you die. Or you can be young always, my friend, as we are now, but you must tell me: will you come or no?

• Lestat : There's nothing in the world now that doesn't hold some sort of...

  Louis : Fascination.

  Lestat : Yes. I'm bored of this prattle.

  Louis : But if we can live without taking human life? It's possible.

  Lestat : Anything's possible. Just try it for a week. Come to New Orleans. Let me show you some real sport.

• Lestat : Claudia. You've been a very, very naughty little girl.

• Lestat : It's your coffin, my love. Enjoy it. Most of us never get to know what it feels like.

  Louis : Why do you do this?

  Lestat : I like to do it. I enjoy it. Take your aesthete's taste to purer things, kill them swiftly, if you will, but do it. For do not doubt: you are a killer, Louis.

• [watching a nude prostitute] 

  Lestat : Now that is pure Creole. Trust Claudia to have found her. What, don't you want her?

  Claudia : I want to be her.

• Lestat : For you, Louis. You can pretend it's wine.

• New Orleans Whore : [fearful whispering]  It's a coffin, it's a coffin.

  Lestat : What's that, my love?

  New Orleans Whore : It's a coffin.

  Lestat : Why, so it is. You must be dead.

  New Orleans Whore : I'm not dead, am I?

  Louis : No, you are not dead.

  Lestat : Not yet.

• Yvette : [to Louis]  Are you not hungry, sir?

  Lestat : Aux contraire, mon cher, he could eat the whole colony.

  [starts to laugh] 

  Louis : [as Yvette starts to pick up Louis's plate, he grabs her arm and looks at the veins in her neck]  I'll finish it, Yvette. Now leave us.

• Lestat : Do we forgive each other then?

• Lestat : Come to New Orleans, then. The Paris Opera's in town. We can try some French cuisine.

  Louis : Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for mortal life.

• Lestat : Whining coward of a vampire that prowls the night killing rats and poodles; you could have finished us both.

  Louis : You've condemned me to Hell.

  Lestat : I don't know any Hell.

• Lestat : [dancing around with the corpse of Claudia's mother]  There's still life in the old lady yet.

• Lestat : [to Louis]  Feed on what you will. Rats, chickens, poodles, I'll leave you to it and watch you come around. But just remember, life without me would be even more unbearable.

  [laughs] 

• Lestat : Enough! Enough! Stop!

  Claudia : I want some more.

• Lestat : Do you still want death or is this enough?

  Louis : Enough.

• Lestat : Louie... I'm so glad you're here. I've dreamed... of this moment. She never should've been... one of us.

  Louis : It's all past, isn't it?

  Lestat : Yes. Past.

  [He slowly turns around in his chair to face Louis, now a mere shadow of his former self] 

  Lestat : Still beautiful, Louie. You always were the strong one.

  Louis : [Lestat jumps back in fear as Louis approaches him]  Don't be frightened. I mean you no harm.

  Lestat : You've come home to me then?

  [Louis gently shakes his head] 

  Lestat : You remember how I was? The vampire that I was?

  Louis : Yes, I remember.

  Lestat : [sighs]  No one could refuse me. Not even you, Louie.

  Louis : I tried.

  Lestat : [Gently laughing]  Yes, you tried. And the more you tried...

  [laughing] 

  Lestat : ... the more I wanted you.

  [as a helicopter hovers over with Lestat frightened] 

  Lestat : Oh, I can't. Stop it, Louie! I hate such lights. And that noise! They make the night brighter than the day!

  Louis : [Kneeling down in front of Lestat]  Lestat... It's false light. It can't harm you.

  Lestat : [Whispered]  If you stay with me, I could venture out again... become the old Lestat.

  Louis : I must leave now.

  [He leaves Lestat] 

• Lestat : You are a vampire who never knew what life was until it ran out in a big gush over your lips.

• Lestat : I am afraid, madam, my days are sacrosanct.

• Lestat : [Lestat follows a trail of bloody dead rats to a tunnel]  All I need to find you, Louis, is follow the corpses of rats.

• Lestat : It's so easy you almost feel sorry for them. You'll get used to killing. Just forget about that mortal coil. You'll become accustomed to it, all too quickly.

• Lestat : We are predators, whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment.

• Lestat : Have you said your goodbyes to the light?