Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost–a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a plea for divine support amidst feelings of insignificance and struggle against life's burdens.
In this quote, Anne Rice reflects on the overwhelming sense of loneliness and insignificance one can feel in the vastness of the universe. She articulates a deep yearning for divine guidance and recognition, emphasizing the struggle of the human heart against despair, guilt, and sorrow. The imagery of a 'tiny cinder' and a 'heart no bigger than a speck of dust' highlights the fragility of human existence in the face of larger existential questions, prompting a search for meaning and connection.
In practice
In a speech addressing mental health struggles, one might quote this to emphasize the need for support.
From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries. I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its heart.
We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.
And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?
Who knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.
Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity.
Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.
I drink for the thirst to come.
Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.
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