Falling in love with a writer is a dangerous thing, isn’t it? The only thing you get out of it sometimes is immortality.
This is the chemical formula for love:
C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2
dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin.It can be easily manufactured in a lab, but overdosing on any of them can cause schizophrenia, extreme paranoia, and insanity.
Let that sink in.
I feel like a contradiction of myself, a body turned inside-out. It’s all at once suffocating and expansive. It’s fatal and life-giving. It makes me want to be better, yet it makes me act recklessly. It’s frightening and exhilarating. I love falling in love.
I think that is an unfair question.
It’s impossible to tell because we love so differently.
The way I show my affection is through a showering of lavish gifts, which Louis often condemns as being superfluous and shallow. Whereas Louis expresses love in much more subtle ways, through other intimacies. A flash of a genuine smile, the gentle squeeze of a hand. It sounds as though I fully understand this and have worked around the way our “love languages” clash, but that is far from it. I am saying all of this now from a very analytical standpoint, but there are instances where these differences can be very disheartening to the both of us.
With that being said, however, there is no way to calculate which one of us loves more. I suppose I am much more prone to grand romantic gestures, but there is no equation that could be employed to figure the true sum of our affections. I do not believe our bond can be quantified.
— Lestat here. Well, first of all, I must correct you, as you made a rather egregious misspelling of my “Forever Companion” ‘s name. Louis with an “e” is in fact the feminine version of his name. Tsk tsk.
That aside, yes, if you’ve read my books, you would be enriched with the knowledge that I have tried – several times – to make other companions. Always knowing that none could compare to him. I’ve made fleeting connections with others… David Talbot being someone I have plucked from the jaws of mortality to bring with me into the abyss of eternity, but even he and I never had the level of spark that lives between Louis and I whenever we are together. I can even feel it through his written words, even in the abbreviated communication of texting (and sexting when I can get him in the mood for it!) when we are apart.
It seems that Monsieur de Pointe du Lac is in fact, as the slang seems to go here, my “better half”, that we are an “OTP”. It’s not always rainbows and sparkles, as in any relationship, there are fights, there is space needed sometimes… of course, passionate reconciliation is often well worth that! We tear eachother to pieces, and fashion eachother to completion again.
So yes, he and I both have, from time to time, sought other companions. None have ever compared to what we have together.
I am sure that he would respond to your question similarly, albeit more concisely.
Lestat here. I want to answer this question from Zaira Maranelli:
“Lestat… could you explain to me what is love for you? I speak about the deep love that make you suffer and pain, that make you forget about you and your thoughts… Have you really ever felt that?” Love, for me, Zaira, is caring for another so completely that that person is as important to you as yourself, so that you suffer when that person suffers, you know joy when that person knows joy, and you cannot separate your own fate from that person’s fate without considerable angst and misery. That is love. And yes, I have known it —- for my mother, for my beloved Nicholas and for Louis, and for Claudia, and for Armand and for others. Love is rooted in understanding, deep emotional and physical attraction, and in common sympathy. And once you love some one like that, well, you have given a hostage to fate. I find it impossible to live without loving. I find it excruciating to feel that I am utterly unloved. I thrive on loving and on being loved. I cannot contemplate living for any length of time without the hope of love, without hoping to experience love in my daily existence, and without the hope of knowing love in the future. In my worst trials, the memory of having been loved, and of loving has sustained me. Part of the agony of loving can be discovering that you have been cruel to the one you love, that you have cheated that person, that you have rejected the loved one when you did not mean to do it at all, that you have failed the person utterly. I have experienced all this; the fault was in me; not in loving. I have loved imperfectly, but I’m learning to love in new and better ways all the time.
Another fan question for Lestat answered:
Lestat here. I want to answer this question from Zaira Maranelli:
“Lestat… could you explain to me what is love for you? I speak about the deep love that make you suffer and pain, that make you forget about you and your thoughts… Have you really ever felt that?” Love, for me, Zaira, is caring for another so completely that that person is as important to you as yourself, so that you suffer when that person suffers, you know joy when that person knows joy, and you cannot separate your own fate from that person’s fate without considerable angst and misery. That is love. And yes, I have known it — for my mother, for my beloved Nicholas and for Louis, and for Claudia, and for Armand and for others. Love is rooted in understanding, deep emotional and physical attraction, and in common sympathy. And once you love some one like that, well, you have given a hostage to fate. I find it impossible to live without loving. I find it excruciating to feel that I am utterly unloved. I thrive on loving and on being loved. I cannot contemplate living for any length of time without the hope of love, without hoping to experience love in my daily existence, and without the hope of knowing love in the future. In my worst trials, the memory of having been loved, and of loving has sustained me. Part of the agony of loving can be discovering that you have been cruel to the one you love, that you have cheated that person, that you have rejected the loved one when you did not mean to do it at all, that you have failed the person utterly. I have experienced all this; the fault was in me; not in loving. I have loved imperfectly, but I’m learning to love in new and better ways all the time.
Lestat here. Last night, through this FB page, I received this question from Davetta L. Wilson. “If you could have one companion for all eternity, who would you choose? Well, Davetta, I will never face such a choice, obviously, but if I did have to choose, the companion would be Louis. My longest most enduring friendship and love affair in this world was with Louis. And though his limitations can be maddening, they can also be as inspiring to me as his virtues. Of course it might seem that Marius would be a wiser choice. After all, Marius is 2000 years old, and entered eternity with the mind of a brilliant Roman philosopher. But the best choices we make are not always the wise choices. Sometimes they are intensely emotional choices. And I’ve always had a deep Romantic respect for emotion. My love for Louis transcends wisdom. And I may need the pain as much as the consolation that an eternal relationship with Louis would involve. Thank you, Davetta, for your question. Lestat signing off.
-Anne Rice’s facebook.
YOU GUYS
Not like we didn’t know it all along, but it was a really nice thing to read first thing this morning!
^Ditto ♥u♥
We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
I-want-my-IWTV 
