The following are quotes from each of the Vampire Chronicles containing descriptions of Louis. Some of Louis's qualities are repeated over and over. I have included all of the quotes, as the more it is mentioned, the more important I believe Anne considered it to be.
All page numbers are from the Ballantine paperbacks, except for The Vampire Armand, which are from the Knopf hardback.
IWTV = Interview with the Vampire
TVL = The Vampire Lestat
QotD = The Queen of the Damned
TotBT = The Tale of the Body Thoief
MtD = Memnoch the Devil
TVA = The Vampire Armand
FEATURES
"The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes that looked down at the boy intently, like flames in a skull. But then the vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon." (Daniel) pg. 4, IWTV
"As you can see, my face is very white, and has a smooth, highly reflective surface, rather like that of polished marble." (Louis) pg. 46, IWTV
"... the lips were of a different texture than the vampire's skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like any person's lips, only deadly white ..." (Daniel) pg. 53, IWTV
"... the eyelashes which were fine black wires in the tender flesh of the lids." (Daniel) pg. 59, IWTV
"... fine dark eyebrows..." (Daniel) pg. 169, IWTV
"... eyes sparked with an inner fire..." (Lestat) pg. 527, TVL
"... Louis of course had been picked for the exquisite bones of his face, for the depth of his green eyes." (Marius) pg. 278, QotD
"... his green eyes full of melancholy wonder, and his arms rather limp at his sides." (Lestat) pg. 477, QotD
"I touched his face again, the cheekbones, the arch beneath the black eyebrow." (Lestat) pg. 479, QotD
"... his face sharpening, the whole picture of high cheekbones and dark probing green eyes firing beautifully." (Lestat) pg. 484, QotD
"His face, quite thin and finely drawn by nature, an exquisitely delicate face for all it's obvious strength, was gorgeously flushed." (Lestat) pg. 106, TotBT
"... I saw his face, the subtle gleaming whiteness of the flesh that did not seem at all to be flesh, the exquisitely symmetrical bones, and the delicate half-closed hand, which hovered in the air, in a perfect attitude of indecision, as the deep set eyes, fired with a subtle and incandescent green, looked down upon me without the slightest palpable emotion... Never had I seen him with mortal eyes. Never had I beheld this wan phantom beauty. How could mortals believe this was a human when their eyes passed over him? Ah, the hands - like those of plaster saints come to life in shadowy grottoes. And how utterly devoid of feeling the face, the eyes not windows of the soul at all, but fine jewel-like snares of illumination." (Lestat in the mortal body) pgs. 260-261, TotBT
"... narrow face... a faint red shimmer veiled his green eyes..." (Lestat in the mortal body) pg. 264, TotBT
"... the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, faintly phosphorescent against the deeper shadows of the church. How beautiful the shape of his wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his upper lip." (Lestat) pgs. 408-409, TotBT
"Green eyes very soft." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"... this sweet-faced vampire, Louis..." (Armand) pg. 269, TVA
EXPRESSIONS
"... and he had glimpsed the white teeth. Only, the vampire had a way of smiling that they were not completely revealed." (Daniel) pg. 53, IWTV
"And when the vampire said this his face darkened for an instant. He frowned, and as his brows drew together a small well appeared in the flesh of his forehead over his left brow, as though someone had pressed it with a finger. It gave him a peculiar look of deep distress." (Daniel) pg. 59, IWTV
"... (Louis) looked at the boy and smiled. His face was serene and almost affectionate." (Daniel) pg. 67, IWTV
"... eternally troubled expression in his green eyes." (Lestat) pg. 499, TVL
"He was watching me with that old expression of awe and incredulity that I had seen a thousand times on his face. I was a fool for it, as the expression goes." (Lestat) pg. 531, TVL
"He smiled; oh it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten simultaneously when he smiled." (Lestat) pg. 480, QotD
"It was his expression; the passion and the innocence and the delicacy of conscience." (Lestat) pg. 481, QotD
"... plain and simple, like the expression on his face." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
HAIR
"... the vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed back over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar." (Daniel) pg. 4, IWTV
"... black, wavy hair..." (Louis on his own reflection) pg. 194, IWTV
"... soft unkempt black hair..." (Lestat) pg. 499, TVL
"Short dark hair..." (Lestat) pg. 523, TVL
"... hair mussed." (Lestat) pg. 527, TVL
"... his black hair full and disheveled as it had always been in the old days..." (Lestat) pg. 477, QotD
"Such fine black hair. The first thing I'd ever noticed about him - well, after his green eyes, that is - was his black hair." (Lestat) pg. 481, QotD
"Black hair short." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"His hair had a reasonable and fashionable look to it - that is, it was clipped and combed and not full of dust." (Lestat) pg. 431, MtD
BODY SHAPE AND BUILD
"... broad shoulders..." (Daniel) pg. 67, IWTV
"... long legs..." (Daniel) pg. 126, IWTV
"... long, slender build..." (Louis on his own reflection) pg. 194, IWTV
"... tall, slender figure." (Lestat) pg. 523, TVL
"Fingers so long and delicate, yet hands so strong." (Lestat) pg. 525, TVL
"Tall, pale, starved a bit." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"... his slim, delicate figure... so lean, so finely sculpted, so sensitive in all his lineaments, was the alluring embodiment of the misery I felt." (Armand) pg. 270, TVA
APPEARANCE
"I was a twenty-five year old man when I became a vampire ..." (Louis) pg. 5, IWTV
""You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive," said the vampire. The boy nodded. "I was. Nothing structurally is changed in me. Only I never knew that I was handsome. Life whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I've said. I gazed at nothing, not even a mirror... especially not a mirror... with a free eye."" (Louis) pg. 47, IWTV
""...by candlelight I always had a less supernatural appearance."" (Louis) pg. 48, IWTV
"Disheveled...his face colored slightly. It became even more human. In fact, he looked more like a mortal man than any of our kind I've ever known." (Lestat) pg. 527, TVL
"...the black-haired one, the pretty one, Louis..." (Khayman) pg.242, QotD
"He looked like a human lost among them, his face softened with color and feeling; his body curiously defenseless, his eyes wondering and sad." (Marius) pg. 278, Qotd
"... he wondered if the human light would go out of Louis's eyes if he ever gained more power..." (Marius) pg. 350, QotD
"What a finely made thing he was." (Lestat) pg. 479, QotD
"... the soft pliant feel of his near human skin." (Lestat) pg. 480, QotD
"He was pale, as always, an artful glimmer in the dark." (Lestat) pg. 405, TotBT
APPEARANCE CAUSED BY HUNGER
"The vampire's face looked weary, drawn, his cheekbones more prominent and his brilliant green eyes enormous. They had begun at dark, which had come early on this on this San Francisco winter night, and now it was just before 10 p.m." (Daniel) pg. 95, IWTV
"The young ones were drawn and weary... Louis was gaunt, and the need for blood was hurting him, though he paid it no mind." (Maharet) pg. 348, QotD
"... the sudden predatory glaze that covered his eyes." (Lestat) pg. 268, TotBT
"He was emaciated and shivering a little. He had neglected his own hunger to be here on guard." (Armand) pg. 365, TVA
APPEARANCE AFTER FEEDING
"... his white skin became a soft luminous pink. It was as if a pink light were shining on him and his entire being seemed to give back that light. The flesh of his lips was dark, almost rose in color, and the veins of his temples and his hands were mere traces on his skin, and his face was youthful and smooth." (Daniel) pg. 341, IWTV
APPEARANCE AS A MORTAL
""But the horror, the horror of seeing my expression! For he had captured it perfectly and there was nothing of horror in it. Those green eyes gazed at me from out of that loosely drawn shape with a mindless innocence, the expressionless wonder of that overpowering craving which he had not understood. Louis of a hundred years ago lost in listening to the sermon of the priest at Mass, lips parted and slack, hair careless, a hand curved in the lap and limp. A mortal Louis."" (Louis on seeing the Artist's sketch of his portrait) pg. 258, IWTV
""... I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter..."" (Lestat) pg. 497, TVL
CLOTHING
"... the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh." (Daniel) pg. 4, IWTV
""... (Claudia) forced me to give up my rusty black for dandy jackets and silk ties and soft grey coats and gloves and black capes."" (Louis) pg. 99, IWTV
"... a frayed black sweater that hung shapelessly from his shoulders, legs like long black spokes... his thumbs hooked very casually in the pockets of his black jeans." (Lestat) pg. 523-524, TVL
"... a mortal child in sagging sweater and worn denim..." (Lestat) pg. 527, TVL
"Louis... Crisp and shining in the black-caped costume of the band, he looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of his own story... Louis wiped the soot from his face wearily, his stiff white shirtfront smudged, his long velvet opera cape burnt and torn... Immaculate he was again, as if his garments were entirely at his command and we had just come from the last act of La Traviata..." (Lestat) pgs. 533, 545, 547, TVL
"The vampire guise of last night had been discarded; yet he seemed even more the gentleman in his worn old clothing, merely a little down on his luck." (Lestat) pg. 252, QotD
"The coat was perhaps a little shorter, a little less full than those old frock coats had been..." (Lestat) pg. 477, QotD
"His clothes are old-fashioned always. As so many of us do, he finds garments which resemble the styles of his time in mortal life. Big loose shirts with gathered sleeves and long cuffs please him, and tight fitting pants. When he wears a coat, which is seldom, it is fitted like the ones I chose - a rider's jscket, very long and full at the hem." (Lestat) pg. 104, TotBT
"I had both hands on the lapels of his miserable dusty black coat..." (Lestat) pg. 265, TotBT
"... Louis had dressed for this little occasion, and, for once, in clothes which did not look as if they'd come from an attic trunk." (Lestat) pg. 430, TotBT
"Plain black clothes, clothes like the Jews in New York... and like the Amish..." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"His clothes were clean and new too, as if he had perhaps dressed for me.
I smiled to myself at that, his dressing for me. But from time to time he did, and when I saw that the shirt had antique buttons of gold and pearl, I knew that he had..." (Lestat) pgs. 431-432, MtD
"Amenable to the styles of the age which had shaped him - given him his flaring black frock coat, the fine waistcoat of white silk, his high priestly looking collar and frills of immaculate linen." (Armand) pg. 270, TVA
"He looked his usual ascetic self, got up in tired black clothes of beautiful cut but impossible dustiness and a shirt so thin and worn that it seemed an elfin web of threads rather than true lace and cloth." (Armand) pg.363, TVA
MANNER/BEHAVIOR/MOVEMENT
"You whining coward of a vampire who prowls the night killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics, and have the look of a baffled idiot at the zoo." (Lestat to Louis) pg. 51, IWTV
"I was out of the window and running down the street, and he was running after me. ...And so he ran after me all the way back to the hotel, all the way across the rooftops, where I hoped to lose him, until I leaped in the window of the parlour and turned in rage and slammed the window shut. ...and when he came through the broken glass we fought as we'd never fought before. It was hell that stopped me, the thought of hell, of us being two souls in hell that grappled in hatred. I lost my confidence, my purpose, my grip. I was down on the floor then, and he was standing over me...his chest heaving slightly from the struggle ...I think I have described to you with accuracy our sparring matches, our angry go-rounds." (Louis describing a fight with Lestat to Daniel) pgs. 75-76, IWTV
"Why don't you drink from that bottle in your pocket?" asked the vampire. "It will make you warm."
"Oh that ..." said the boy. "I was going to. I just ..."
The vampire laughed. "You didn't think it was polite!" he said, and he suddenly slapped his thigh.
"That's true," the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the vampire.
"No," the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the offer." (Louis and Daniel) pg. 127, IWTV
"...graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicholas. He had Nicki's grim intensity, his rebelliousness, his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to despair... his staggering dependence, his infatuation with my every gesture, my every spoken word. His naiveté... Even his unusual beauty and unfailing charm were something of a secret to him... He was, after all, a discriminating and inhibited child of the middle class, aspiring as all the colonial planters did to be a genuine aristocrat, though he'd never met one... the most beguilingly human fiend I have ever known... a compassionate and contemplative creature, always the gentleman..." (Lestat) pg. 497-499, TVL
"... turning and stepping away like a dancer to look up at it..." (Lestat) pg. 524, TVL
"I felt an arm around my throat suddenly. And I felt Louis's body pivot, and I heard the sound of his fist strike the preternatural skin and bone behind me, heard the whispered curse." (Lestat) pg. 542, TVL
"Lestat, don't go after them!" he said, his polite manner strained to the fullest." (Lestat) pg. 545, TVL
"And Louis had been so taken with her, sitting back in the shadows, reticent, musing, as he'd always been." (Lestat) pg. 547, TVL
"Louis, the gentle one, with the black hair and green eyes, whose steps made a careless sound when he walked, who even whistled in dark streets so that mortals heard him coming... He moved with silky strides across the dusty room... Louis had a tender, educated soul, and none of the dazzling power of Gabrielle or her son..." (Marius) pgs. 18-19, QotD
"Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and simple... Louis would go where Lestat led him. Louis would perish if Lestat perished..." (Khayman) pg. 202, QotD
"Something so refined about that one, even as he slipped beneath the floorboards, something about the way that he lay down as if in the grave; the way he composed his limbs, falling at once into utter darkness." (Khayman) pgs. 242-243, QotD
"...and there was Louis beside her, struggling gracefully to keep up. Louis looked so touchingly civilized in the wilderness; so hopelessly out of place." (Lestat) pg. 252, QotD
"Louis, unguarded and passive as always..." (Marius) pg. 276, QotD
"He had been picked for the inveterate attitude of somber appreciation he revealed now." (Marius) pg. 278, QotD
"This one was so gifted, and yet not gifted at the same time... the human tenderness, the human wisdom that no one could give another; the gift of knowing others' suffering with which Louis had probably been born." (Marius) pg. 350, QotD
"The cold was biting at him a little, biting at his hands. He didn't like to put his hands in his pockets the way men did today. He didn't think it a graceful thing to do." (Lestat) pg. 478, QotD
"He was pondering. He ran his fingers back through his hair." (Lestat) pg. 481, QotD
"He walks the streets like a phantom, soundlessly, drawn slowly to those who welcome death, or seem to welcome it... And when he feeds it is painless and delicate and swift." (Lestat) pg. 104, TotBT
"His senses are finely tuned and vampiric, but not like a Child of the Millennia. He cannot read anyone's thoughts with much success. When he puts a mortal into a trance, it's always a mistake." (Lestat) pg.105, TotBT
"... he lifted his right hand languidly, wholly unconscious of the seductive quality of this simple gesture, and ran his fingers back through his loose dark hair." L(Lestat) pg.109, TotBT
"... but with a gesture too quick for my eye he hurled me backward against the chair." (Lestat in the mortal body) pg. 267, TotBT
"He was facing me, one knee drawn up on the pew and his arm resting on the back of it." (Lestat) pg. 405, TotBT
"Louis took to wandering more and more often." (Lestat) pg. 128, MtD
"Graceful walk of one who does not like to make noise, or make a fuss, or be seen." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"... the beguiling tilt of his narrow head... My old familiar gentleman friend, my tender enduring pupil, educated as truly by Victorian ways of courtesy as ever by me in the ways of being a monster." (Lestat) pg.423, MtD
"Slowly, he sat down beside me and folded his legs, and looked off as though it was not polite to stare at me." (Lestat), pg. 431, MtD
VOICE/ACCENT/LANGUAGE
"Ah, that's the accent..." the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to laugh.
And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar, when I asked you what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's all. I never guessed it was French."
"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "I'm not as shocked as I pretend to be. It's only that I forget it from time to time." (Daniel and Louis) pgs. 5-6, IWTV
"...I invariably found someone amoungst the peasants or guests who spoke enough German or, at times, even French to discuss with me the familliar legends."
"A room for the night!" I said in German.'"
"She said a prayer as I passed her, I was sure of it, though I couldn't understand the Slavic words."
"Suddenly he turned to me, and I saw he'd been crying. 'Do you speak English?' he said, his voice booming in the silence.
'Yes, I do', I said to him." (Louis describing his time in Varna to Daniel) pgs. 170, 171, 172, IWTV
"...And tell me, where do you come from!' he said, dropping to his knees, his hand on the arm of my chair. 'Your voice, I know that accent; speak again.'
I was vaguely horrified at the thought of having an accent to my French, but this wasn't my immediate concern." (Santiago and Louis) pg. 244, IWTV
"The voice was like a whisper that wasn't a whisper. And I could hear his French accent so clearly, though I had never been able to hear my own." (Lestat) pg. 524, TVL
"But the voice was polite and low, as it had always been." (Lestat) pg. 525, TVL
"Such a human voice, so kind... his slow voice was a balm to my nerves." (Lestat) pg. 423, MtD
"I should throw them out now, Pandora," he said in a voice that couldn't have threatened the most timid soul." (Armand) pg. 365, TVA
Long description from The Vampire Armand
"Louis de Pointe du Lac, already described above, but always fun to envisage: slender, slightly less tall than Lestat, his maker, black of hair, gaunt and white of skin, with amazingly long and delicate fingers, and feet that do not make a sound. Louis, whose green eyes are soulful, the very mirror of patient misery, soft-voiced, very human, weak, having lived only two hundred years, unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love. Louis, an indiscriminate killer, because he cannot satisfy his thirst without killing, though he is too weak to risk the death of the victim in his arms, and because he has no pride or vanity which would lead him to a hierarchy of intended victims, and therefore takes those who cross his path, regardless of age, physical endowments or blessings bestowed by nature or fate. Louis, a deadly and romantic vampire, the kind of night creature who hovers in the deep shadows at the Opera House to listen to Mozart's Queen of the Night give forth her piercing and irresistible song.
Louis, who has never vanished, who has always been known to others, who is easy to track and easy to abandon, Louis who will not make others after his tragic blunders with vampiric children, Louis who is past questing for God, for the Devil, for Truth or even for love.
Sweet, dusty Louis, reading Keats by the light of one candle. Louis standing in the rain on a slick deserted downtown street watching through the store window the brilliant young actor, Leonardo DiCaprio as Shakespeare's Romeo kissing his tender and loving Juliet (Claire Danes) on a television screen." (Armand) pgs. 276-277, TVA
If anyone wants to compile any of these in the rest of the books, please @ me, I'd love to read them!
This is book!Armand, who is still recovering from his religious psychosis and suicide attempt, when he started nursing book!Louis, who is still in psychosis and also recovering from a suicide attempt:
