Blackwood Farm by Anne RiceMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finished reading this book for the second time in my life on Thursday, June 26, 2025 at 4:29 p.m. My last reading session was 1 hour and 18 minutes or 78 minutes.
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Most of these quotes came from my Kindle notes & highlights (my goodreads avatar). Some are new ones I wanted to save.
“With each passing month, Goblin becomes stronger, and his assaults on me more prolonged.
I can no longer fight him off.
It won’t surprise you, I don’t think, that these assaults are vaguely pleasurable, not as pleasurable to me as feeding on a human victim, but they involve a vague orgasmic shimmer that I can’t deny” (4).
🫠
“But in the main, my existence is lonely and bitter. If it weren’t for my mortal family, it would be unendurable” (6-7).
“And so, except for my mortal connections, I’m alone” (8).
* I missed these characters so much! 🥹 Crazy to say that the spiritual intercourse Quinn mentions in the first chapter got me excited XD
“and let him think I’d become a common mortal reader of the Chronicles…” (16).
“The scent of the blood was driving me crazy, that and my savage desire to close the gap between us, by murder or by love” (18).
“‘Good-bye, my friend,’ I said in as strong a voice as I could muster. I reached awkwardly for his hand and held it firmly. He looked at me and his face softened” (32).
* I wanted to say that the audiobook narrator of this book, David Pittu, does a really good job at voicing Lestat's dialogue! Like really, really good! He has his accent down to a T and he also has his sultry, sexy way of speaking. ;)
“I was thinking how very attractive he was, I couldn’t stop myself, with his yellow hair so thick and long, turning so gracefully at the collar of his coat, and his large probing violet eyes. There are very few creatures on earth who have true violet eyes. The slight difference between his eyes meant nothing” (43).
Here is some more evidence that Lestat has true violet eyes.
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| Source from IWTV S2 🤩 |
“‘And look at your coat,’ she said to Lestat, ‘how marvelous. Why, it’s a wide-skirted frock coat. Wherever did you get it, and the cameo buttons, how perfect. Will you come here this very minute and let me see them? You can see that I’ve a positive mania for cameos. And now as the years have gone by, I think of little else.’
…
As she examined the buttons, remarking that each was a different muse of the Grecian Nine Muses, Lestat was beaming down on her as if he were genuinely smitten, and I loved him for it. Because Aunt Queen was the person I loved most in all the world. Having the two of them together was a little more than I could bear.
‘Yes, a real true frock coat,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m a musician, Madam,’ Lestat said to her. ‘You know in this day and age a rock musician can wear a frock coat if he wishes, and so I indulge myself. I’m theatrical and incorrigible. A regular beast when it comes to the exaggerated and the eccentric. I like to clear all obstacles when I enter a room, and I have a perfect mania for antique things’” (46-47).
“‘Lestat, Madam,’ he answered, pronouncing it ‘Les-dot,’ with the accent on the second syllable. ‘I’m not really very famous either. And I don’t sing anymore at all actually, except to myself when I’m driving my black Porsche madly or riding my motorcycle at a raging speed on the roads. Then I’m a regular Pavarotti—’” (48).
🖤 I love to imagine Lestat speeding on his bike or in his Porsche XD <3
“‘And Lestat, my darling Lestat, tell me about your clothes, your odd and bold taste. I love it. I must confess that to picture you in that frock coat, rushing along on a motorcycle, is quite amusing, to be sure.’
‘Well Madam,’ he said, laughing softly, ‘my longing for the stage and the microphone is gone, but I won’t give up the fancy clothes. I can’t give them up. I’m the prisoner of capricious fashion and am actually quite plain tonight. I think nothing of piling on the lace and the diamond cuff links, and I envy Quinn that snappy leather coat he’s wearing. You could call me a Goth, I think.’ He glanced at me very naturally, as though we were both simple humans. ‘Don’t they call us snappy antique dressers Goth now, Quinn?’
‘I think they do,’ I said, trying to catch up” (48-49).
I love this quote so much! I love everything Goth related! This book is considered Goth literature, so it is absolutely perfect! I was smiling the whole time! ;D
“‘What an unusual name, Lestat,’ she returned. ‘Does it have a meaning?’
‘None whatsoever, Madam,’ Lestat answered. ‘If memory serves me right, and it does less and less, the name’s compounded of the first letter of each of my six older brothers’ names, all of whom—the brothers and their names—I grew up to cheerfully and vigorously despise’” (49).
This is very interesting, but true Anne Rice heads know the true meaning behind Lestat’s name. ;)
“But this was Lestat, not my Maker, this was not that loathsome being. This was my hero under my roof” (51).
Awwww!
I love that Quinn thinks that Lestat is his hero! It’s so sweet! ♥️♥️
“‘But you love books, then,’ Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen.
‘Oh, yes,’ Lestat said. ‘Sometimes they’re the only thing that keeps me alive.’
‘What a thing to say at your age,’ she laughed.
‘No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don’t you think? The young are eternally desperate,’ he said frankly. ‘And books, they offer one hope—that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved.’
‘Oh, yes, I think so, I really do,’ Aunt Queen responded, almost gleefully. ‘It ought to be that way with people and sometimes it is. Imagine—each new person an entire universe. Do you think we can allow that? You’re clever and keen.’
‘I think we don’t want to allow it,’ Lestat responded. ‘We’re too jealous, and fearful. But we should allow it, and then our existence would be wondrous as we went from soul to soul.’
Aunt Queen laughed gaily” (51).
I put my hand on my chest in love knowing that I was going to save and savor this quote.
It is perfect.
“And I was aware of a hot mixture of emotions” (61).
* I love Quinn as a character because I feel like he represents the reader. He’s read The Vampire Chronicles and loves Lestat just like us! I think Tarquin is so cool! <3
*
These houses are what I picture Blackwood Manor to look like, with a dirt drive and of course the lake behind.
* The new hardback book I have for this book reminds me of how Blackwood Manor feels: white, clean, and always a gracefully beautiful house.
“He was withdrawing, leaving me cold and hurt and lonely all over, fiercely, catastrophically lonely—he was deserting me” (68).
“…and right now my heart’s warm from being with you. … or we have a story to live together. Right now my greedy heart is fastened to you’” (77).
“‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here comes the litany of reasons I didn’t kill you. I like you. I like that you have a woman’s lineaments and a man’s body, a boy’s curious eyes and a man’s large easy gestures, a child’s frank words and a man’s voice, a blundering manner and an honest grace.”
He smiled at me quite deliberately, and winked his right eye, and then went on” (78).
😉
“Literature and music, painting and history—these are my passions. These are the things that still, somehow, in hours of quiet and lonesomeness, keep me alive” (124-125).
“‘Jasmine sat there opposite me, nursing a cup of black coffee and smoking cigarette after cigarette, her dark face very smooth and her manner calm, and then Jasmine said very distinctly:” (138).
“‘I couldn’t speak. But when the waiter appeared I ordered more pecan pancakes, and I put so much butter on them they were swimming in butter. And Jasmine just went on smoking, and that’s how it was” (138-139).
“I don’t think you can feel sheer panic continuously. Your mental system breaks down. It comes in waves, and you have to tell yourself, well, this will end.
‘I went back to a leaden misery that was more easily manageable…” (148).
“Then nothing. Nothing but the quiet and the dying afternoon around us, and a kind of dread I had to escape” (152).
“‘That it banished despair, this excited feeling—that’s what I liked” (154).
“‘The light was golden and I hated it because it was already failing, and the dread was coming on me thick” (154).
“but he didn’t answer me any more than God had” (155).
“Things don’t really go in a straight line the way living people think. Everything is always happening all the time’” (157).
“‘A thrilling ecstasy took hold of me, a certainty of the pure beauty of what I saw and the irrelevance of all else” (157).
“...you’re certifiably insane…and I swore to her I would never do it, only think about it” (191).
“‘This memory’s etched: but what isn’t?” (219).
“I tried to reach back to the excitement I’d felt when I first came upon the island. I tried to feel anything that would lift the awful despair from me. But excitement had turned to dread, and I was an expert on dread. Now it had other springs to feed it” (220).
“She’d left Seymour behind because he didn’t want to see any more scenes” (222).
“But my heart was leading the band” (224).
“‘Optimism was a virtue; and the despair, the terror I often felt—it was a sin” (228).
“I felt a cowardly sense of safety” (263).
“and huge arched windows were open everywhere to the glowing afternoon around us” (270).
“‘The windows were full of the sun-streaked sky, and I could see the twinkling lights of the two river bridges shining wonderfully in the dusk. I loved it” (271).
“I could see secrets, I could see cleverness and sweetness” (276).
“‘THE NIGHT HAD too many hours, and surely the following morning would be an agony, or so I thought” (328).
“‘As I crossed the back terrace a wave of giddiness came over me. And when I look back on that moment—when I remember the starlight and the warm air, and the light streaming out of the kitchen door to greet me, when I remember the feeling of charged excitement, I remember how very alive I felt, how in love with Mona and how foolishly excited I was by the mysterious stranger, and how I held myself to be invincible even in the face of strong evidence that I was not” (338).
“‘this is a situation that’s never going to be perfect, but I think we can do these things to make it better” (345).
“An aftertaste lingered, a shimmering feeling of good will and deliberate generosity that was as palpable as the breeze” (346).
“...but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it so I let it slide” (367).
“The day vanished. The night descended” (374).
“I left out nothing” (380).
During the part where Tarquin was telling everyone his story about Rebecca and Sugar Devil Island I wonder if he even told the part where he “arrived” inside the house on the island. He did say he left out nothing. That would have been so awkward to tell his aunt.
“...never, have a workman on Sugar Devil Island after dark’” (381).
I am wondering if during this point in Quinn telling Lestat this story if he knew what vampires were because he did say that he read the chronicles. I wonder at what point did Tarquin read them. Of course Stirling was insinuating that Petronia was a vampire without actually flat-out saying it.
“‘Dawn had come, vague and pink as twilight over the city” (398).
“‘We were rising, and I saw the clouds below me. And I felt the wind against my cheek, and my skin was chilled, but it didn’t matter because all around me were the glorious stars” (428).
“And it did seem that all my life fled from me, that image after image of childhood, young manhood and the last few years of love and ecstasy and wonder fled from me with my blood—uncontrollably, unstinting and pure” (439-440).
“They couldn’t feel what I felt. They couldn’t know what I knew” (446).
“How do I know what I want? If ever I knew, I might have been content. But why do I tell such lies? Or more to the point, why do I believe them?” (449).
“Then I became the woman for him. I became something soft, something decent, something fine” (450).
“The music was throbbing beyond the neon sign” (460).
“It’s easy to despair. It’s easy to succumb to bitter hatred of yourself. It’s easy to feel that the world no longer belongs to you, when nothing is further from the truth. It’s all yours and the passage of the years is yours. And now you must simply and plainly live up to it’” (460).
“I shuddered. I felt the breeze. The emptiness” (499).
“a roaring carousel of life” (520).
* I wonder if Tarquin is bisexual. I’ll have to look that up! He said that he likes men, but he also likes Mona.
* When I first read the Quinn and Goblin shower scene I felt weirded out, but reading it again years later I don’t know how to feel. It’s at the end of chapter 15 by the way. I like that Anne used the “c” word here. It made it have a sudden harsh, sensual feeling. I don’t know if this is a hot scene. I wonder what other people think of this small scene. I just think that it was weird what Goblin brought up afterwards. I can’t believe that Quinn did that with his doppelganger spirit and kissed him lustily too. Like wow. And he told this all to Lestat, who isn’t even phased by this. Lol!
* I can’t believe that Quinn bit Petronia’s cock to take in her blood! I was like what?! 😱 Wow, Anne Rice! You are a bad woman! ;) But I am also glad that I got to the part where Quinn finally becomes a vampire.
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