Carmilla Quotes

“But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
”
― Sheridan Le Fanu

“Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine.”
― Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Some ineffable piece of me had gone, rewritten by her touch, and what had been stolen was patched by a piece of her, some bit of her heart I had unknowingly taken with me.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“It pained me, her hand wrapping around the tender, beating something beneath it, as though her fingers ruptured holes within my chest, but I could not bear to have her leave.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“I could have bathed in every piece of her, but I was left parched for thirst.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me. and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”
― J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“I had missed you all my life.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“To savor every moment together would be enough. It would have to be enough.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“You give in to your passions with the fearlessness of one already damned”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“MARY: Renaissance, not medieval. Most of the castle was built during the sixteenth century, although I believe its foundations date from the fourteenth.

CATHERINE: And our readers will care why?

MARY: You may not care for accuracy, but I do—and Carmilla will, when she reads this book.

CATHERINE: If I ever get the damn thing written, with all these interruptions!”
― Theodora Goss, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

“My name is Carmilla,” said the woman. “I’ve come from Mina, in Budapest. I think it’s time you were rescued from this place. Don’t you think?”
― Theodora Goss, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

“Now, I felt I had lost something I’d never even held.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“The effect of the full moon in such a state of of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people, it had marvellous physical influences connected with life.”
― Sheridan Le Fanu

“Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.’

- Carmilla”
― J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmila

“But I could not look away. Nor did I think I wanted to, even if impulse whispered to run.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

“I wrote about everything, about the scintillating scarlet of the leaves outside, of my aching longing for Mississippi, but most of all I wrote about her. I was never so brazen as to call her by name, of course; I called her Persephone, or Puck, or any of those other literary figures that she seemed to conjure up with her costumes and posturing. I wrote about her tangle of black hair, her lithe tanned arms, her delicate bird-boned ankles. I worked myself into a fever over her, hunched over my bedside table. Sometimes my poems venerated her like a saint, other times they cast her as the Devil herself, but Carmilla always played a starring role.”
― S. T. Gibson

“My pen trembled as I wrote her name, afraid to implicate myself, but the words flowed like an evocative river. Perhaps it was to make sense of it, to siphon through my knowledge and find a creature of darkness, yet all I wrote of was light.”
― S.D. Simper, Carmilla and Laura

“Su horrendo apetito de sangre viva le aporta el
vigor de su existencia despierta. El vampiro es propenso a
verse fascinado, con acaparadora vehemencia parecida a la
pasión del amor, por determinadas personas. Persiguiendo a
éstas, ejerce una paciencia y una astucia inagotables, ya
que el acceso a una persona en particular puede verse
obstaculizado de mil maneras. Jamás desistirá hasta haber
saciado su pasión y succionado la vida misma de su
codiciada víctima. Pero, en esos casos, economizará y
prolongará su disfrute asesino con un refinamiento
epicúreo, realzado por las aproximaciones graduales de un
complicado galanteo. En estos casos, parece como si
anhelara algo así como simpatía y consentimiento. En los
casos ordinarios va directo a su objeto, lo vence por la
fuerza, y, a menudo, lo estrangula y aniquila en el curso de
un solo festín.”
― Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are are grubs and larvae[...]”
― J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla