A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.
And so we remained till the red of the dawn began to fall through the snow gloom. I was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror. But when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again.
Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.
Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.
Despair has its own calms.
He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please.
How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.
I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.
I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting.
I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well.
In the summer of this year we made a journey to Transylvania, and went over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and terrible memories. It was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths.
It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?
It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.
Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.
There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.
There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.
This then was the Undead home of the King Vampire, to whom so many more were due.
Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.
Dracula was not a huge success during Stoker's lifetime. It became more popular after his death.
Stoker and his wife, Florence, had one child--a son named Noel.
Stoker's first full-length novel, The Snake's Pass, was published in 1890.
Stoker's final novel, The Lair of the White Worm, was published in 1911 and filmed in 1988.
Before writing Dracula, Stoker reportedly spent eight years researching European folklore and stories about vampires.
Stoker married Florence Balcome in 1878.
After leaving the civil service, Stoker became a journalist and part-time drama critic for The Evening Mail a Dublin newspaper.
During his collegiate days, Stoker served as president of the University Philosophical Society.
Stoker attended the University of Dublin where he studied history, literature, math, and physics.
Stoker was the second oldest of six children. He had two sisters and three brothers.
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