"The right word, the right rhythm, the right length of the sentences, the right paragraph, all that is important. It’s very important. You’re inviting someone to come into a drama. You’re asking them to let themselves be spellbound. All those ingredients matter as you create that spell. The white space on the page matters. The exclamation point, the question mark, all of it matters. I’ve had to mute exclamation points. I hear them, I see them, I feel them when I write. And then I have to take them out because they are too loud for the reader. They leap off the page. I wish there was some little sign we had that was half an exclamation point."
While Rice may not have created her own language like Dahl's gobblefunk, she did create a world of supernatural angst, fervency, and catharsis that has produced incredible imagery, motifs, and characterization (the child vampire, Claudia, who would never grow up).
Here are a few quotes from Rice and her novels to give you a sense of the author. I found the majority of these on goodreads.com
- “None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.” - The Vampire Lestat
- “You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.”
- “Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.” - The Witching Hour
- “To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself.”
- “There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.” - Servant of the Bones
