Gaston Leroux quotes:

Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.

Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!

Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, My spirit longs with thee to rest

But do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?

They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.

Are people so unhappy when they love?" "Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.

If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.

I say, `Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose,and come to look round the torture-chamber! Aha, aha, aha!

You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!

She's singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!

A ghost who, on the same evening, carries off an opera-singer and steals twenty-thousand francs is a ghost who must have his hands very full!

Erik: Are you very tired? Christine: Oh, tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. Erik: Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.

When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever.

Everybody knows that orthopedic science provides beautiful false noses for people who have lost their noses naturally or as a result of an operation.

He stared dully at the desolate, cold road and the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder or more dead than his heart. He had loved an angel and now he despised a woman.

There is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it.

...the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders who gave the explanation in a trembling voice: "It's the ghost!

All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (Erik)

An author really ought to have nothing but flowers in the room where he works.

And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should.

Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.

Erik, Erik! I saved your life! Remember? You were scentenced to death! But for me you would be dead by now.

Everyone dies. I just choose the time and place for some of them!

He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.

Hullo"¦ the wall is a looking-glass!

I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I don't lock myself up in my dressing-room with men's voices.

I am going to die of love....daroga....I am dying of love .... That's how it is... I loved her so! And I love her still...daroga.....and I am dying of love for her, I tell you! if you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her...It was the first ...time, daroga, the first time I ever kissed a woman.. Yes, alive... I kissed her alive.... And she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!

I am not really wicked. Love me, and you will see!

I give you five minutes to spare your blushes. here is the little bronze key that opens the ebony caskets on the mantle piece in the Louise-Phillipe room. In one of the caskets you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no... The grasshopper, be careful of the grass hopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!

I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!...and she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.

Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was as golden as the sun's rays, and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her red shoes and her fiddle, but loved most of all, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music.

Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant! -Erik in The Phantom of the Opera

No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all.

None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.

Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased.

Persons visited by the angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind

Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost...

Sometimes, the Angel [of Music] leans over the cradle... and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men of fifty, which, you must admit is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a wicked heart or a bad conscience.

The opera ghost really existed

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

The shadow had followed behind them, clinging to their steps; and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky.

There are times where excessive innocence seems so monstrous that it becomes hateful.

We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost.

why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing?

Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves.

You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself.

Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!