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Quotes by Gaston Leroux

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!

In Heaven's name, Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill him!" "Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!" "Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! ... But, in any case, I will kill him!" "Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! ... He dragged me by my hair and then ... and then ... Oh, it is too horrible!" "Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul fiercely. "Out with it, quick!" "Then he hissed at me. 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? ... I dare say! ... Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this ... this ... my head is a mask? Well,' he roared, 'tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along! I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!' And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails! ... 'Know,' he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, 'know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you! ... Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again! ... As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back ... but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good... So I shall keep you here! ... Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me! ... When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!' "He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs. And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections. Presently I heard the sound of the organ; and then I began to understand Erik's contemptuous phrase when he spoke about Opera music. What I now heard was utterly different from what I had heard up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob. But, little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable.

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!

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

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

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

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

Im 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!

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 firemans name was Pampin.

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

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.

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.

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:Maam... 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.

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.

Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Eriks 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? Im 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

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

... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never... let me kiss her... She used to run away... and throw me my mask!... Nor any other woman... ever, ever!... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And fell at her feet, crying... and I kissed her feet... her little feet... crying. Youre crying, too, daroga... and she cried also... the angel cried!...

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

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

“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!”

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