SCHOLAR ISLAND

"If ever there was in the world a warranted and proven history, it is that of vampires: nothing is lacking, official reports, testimonials of persons of standing, of surgeons, of clergyman, of judges: the Judicial Evidence is all embracing."

Jean Jaques Rousseau

"The basic idea behind the vampire stories, which you hear from Bolivia all the way to Ecuador, is that certain people, who are usually rich and dress in Western clothing, turn themselves into animals at night to kill local people and take their body fat, which they then sell for many uses-including rocket fuel. The basic premise is right-there are rich people who are part of a clandestine economy waiting to catch unaware individuals and sacrifice them for the sake of gaining wealth."

Johan Reinhard from Patrick Tierney

The Highest Altar *

"All of the Dracula's  seemed intent upon belonging to a church, receiving the sacraments, being buried as Christians, and at least being identified with a religion."

Raymond T. McNally & Radu Florescu

Dracula: A True History

"Dracula is committed to nothing less than the breakdown of the distinction between life and death, and the creation of a race of undead beings whose relationship to time, to nourishment, and to sunlight mirrors his own. Like Satan, his real father, Dracula's argument is with God, and with the biological arrangements God made for humanity."

McGrath

"As I was cutting some fruit, I happened to make a rather deep gash in my finger. The blood spurted out immediately in crimson jets, and some of the drops were sprinkled upon Clarimonde. Her eyes lit up, her features assumed an expression of fierce, wild joy that I had never seen in them before. She leapt out of bed with the agility of an animal, a monkey or a cat, flew at my wound, and began to suck it with an air of unspeakable delight. She swallowed the blood in small draughts, slowly and grudgingly, like an epicure tasting Xeres or Syracuse wine; she half closed her eyes, and the pupils of her green eyes became elongated instead of round."

The Beautiful Vampire

Theophile Gautier

"Clarimonde came in and, having taken off her wrap, lay down in bed by my side. When she felt quite sure that I was asleep, she bared my arm and drew a golden pin from her hair; then she began to murmur in a low voice;

"One drop, just one little red drop, a ruby on the point

of my needle! . . . . .

Since you love me still, I must not die. Ah! poor love! his beautiful blood, so red, I am going to drink it! Sleep, my only treasure, sleep, my god, my child; I will not hurt you, I will only take from your life what I need to keep mine from going out."

Theophile Gautier

"Until you have experienced it...you have no idea what it is like. To have one's blood sucked in darkness by someone one adores."

Balthazar (P-197)

Lawrence Durell

Biblical Prohibitions against blood drinking

Dueternomy 12:16

Genesis 9-4

Leviticus 17:11-12

"In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming. When I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. They were dark, and had high aquiline noses , like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contracted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great, with masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where ."

Dracula

Bram Stoker

"What an elegant monster he is! How strong, how graceful, how lovely, how wise. And above all--and here is his central mystery--how deadly...and erotic."

Leonard Wolf

Introduction to the

Annotated Dracula

" Dracula. Our eidolon. . . . He is huge, and we admire size; strong, and we admire strength. He moves with the confidence of a creature that has energy, power, and will. Granted that he has energy without grace, power without responsibility, and his will is an exercise in death. We need only to look a little to one side to see how tempting is the choice he makes available: immortality. He has collected on the devil's bargain: the infinitely stopped moment."

Dream of Dracula

Leonard Wolf

"Oh! how beautiful she was. The greatest painters, searching for ideal beauty in heaven and bringing down to earth the divine portrait of the Madonna, do not approach this fabulous reality. Neither poet's verse nor painter's palette can give an idea of it. She was fairly tall, with the figure and carriage of a Goddess. Her soft fair hair was parted and flowed over her temples like two waves of gold; a queen with her diadem, one might fancy; her forehead of a bluish, transparent whiteness, spread broad and serene over almost brown eyebrows , a peculiarity which still further enhanced the effect of sea-green eyes that shone with a sparkle and brilliance that were unbearable. What eyes! With one flash they decided the fate of a man; they had a life, a limpidity, a liquid brightness, which I have never seen in human eyes; rays like arrows darted from them straight to the heart ."

The Beautiful Vampire

Theophile Gautier

"You convinced me long ago that the world was a Savage Garden...well, then, in the Savage Garden you shine beautifully , my friend....in my wanderings....I always return to see the colors of the garden in your shadow, or reflected in your eyes."

Anne Rice

Memnoch the Devil

"I am the Vampire Lestat. Let me pass now from fiction into legend."

Ann Rice

"Vampires are not always foamy-mouthed fiends with blood dripping from extended incisors, but rather can be participants in which one partner gains vitality at the expense of another."

Twitchell

Book: "The Vampire Encyclopedia" by Matthew Bunson

Book: "The Vampire" Montague Summers

Book: "Blood: Art, Power, Politics and Pathology" Ed by James M. Bradburne

Book: "Bram Stoker and The Man Who Was Dracula" by Barbara Belford

Book: "THE VAMPIRE BOOK, SECOND EDITION: The Encyclopedia of the Undead" by J. Gordon Melton

Book: "Piercing the Darkness, Undercover with Vampires in America Today"

See Article: "Not Your Usual Vampires, but Scary Nonetheless" New York Times, Tues,Jan 14,2003...about Vampire hysteria in Malawi 

Book" Forests of the Vampire: Slavic Myth" by Charles Phillips et al.

Book: "True Vampires" by Sondra London