“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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (Erik)”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“Are people so unhappy when they love?"
"Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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!”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“She's singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“Holy angel, in Heaven blessed,
My spirit longs with thee to rest”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“But do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“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.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“Our lives are one masked ball.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing?”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from 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, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
“Does he love you so much?" "He would commit murder for me.”
― Gaston Leroux, quote from The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date May 6, 1868
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― Jenn Bennett, quote from The Anatomical Shape of a Heart
“If anything, people without conscience tend to believe their way of being in the world is superior to ours. They often speak of the naïveté of other people and their ridiculous scruples, or of their curiosity about why so many people are unwilling to manipulate others, even in the service of their most important ambitions. Or they theorize that all people are the same—unscrupulous, like them—but are dishonestly playacting something mythical called “conscience.” By this latter proposition, the only straightforward and honest people in the world are they themselves. They are being “real” in a society of phonies.”
― Martha Stout, quote from The Sociopath Next Door
“Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great … He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.”
― Michael Shermer, quote from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
“Against anything human, more than one round to the head would be overkill: When the merely mortal goes up against the supernatural, there's no such thing as overkill”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files
“Le persone si riconoscono nelle loro merci; trovano la loro anima nella loro automobile, nel giradischi ad alta fedeltà, nella casa a due piani, nell'attrezzatura della cucina. Lo stesso meccanismo che lega l'individuo alla sua società è mutato, e il controllo sociale è radicato nei nuovi bisogni che esso ha prodotto.”
― Herbert Marcuse, quote from One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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