Gaston Leroux > Quotes

“Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (Erik)”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I am not really wicked. Love me, and you will see!”
― Gaston Leroux

“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...”
― Gaston Leroux, 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!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

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

“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!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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”
― Gaston Leroux

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Everyone dies. I just choose the time and place for some of them!”
― Gaston Leroux

“Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“She's singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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!”
― Gaston Leroux

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“...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!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Wildly my Mind beats against you, but my soul obeys.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'someone,' 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 empire of the world; and in the end had to content himself with a cellar. Surely we must pity the Opera ghost!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Hullo… the wall is a looking-glass!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Holy angel, in Heaven blessed,
My spirit longs with thee to rest”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Everybody knows that orthopedic science provides beautiful false noses for people who have lost their noses naturally or as a result of an operation.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all.
”
― Gaston Leroux

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

“Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia... Possibly, someday, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music...”
― Gaston Leroux

“In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.”
― Gaston Leroux

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Should we pity him? Should we curse him? He asked only to be someone like everyone else. But he was too ugly. . . Why did God make a man as ugly as that?”
― Gaston Leroux

“We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost.”
― Gaston Leroux

“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!”
― Gaston Leroux

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Le presbytère n'a rien perdu de son charme, ni le jardin de son éclat.”
― Gaston Leroux, Le mystère de la chambre jaune