Gaston Leroux

“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.”

“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.”

“For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least ofall fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a roundof inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a littlefarther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared,trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practicallyfainted in the arms of the proud mother of little Jammes.[1] And why?Because he had seen coming toward him, AT THE LEVEL OF HIS HEAD, BUTWITHOUT A BODY ATTACHED TO IT, A HEAD OF FIRE! And, as I said, afireman is not afraid of fire.The fireman's name was Pampin.”

“I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture chamber in my house... I want to have a nice quiet flat with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else!”

“He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.”

“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!”

“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!”

“While there are things about which one does not boast, there are others for which to be pitied would be all too humiliating.”

“They both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends, and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars:"Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?"And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather.”

“when a man", continued Raoul,"adopts such romantic methods to entice a young girl's affections. ..""The man must be either a villain, or the girl a fool: is that it?”

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

“Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her. But that she could marry the young man she pleased because she had cried with me, and mingled her tears with mine. ~ Erik”