Gaston Leroux Quotes & Sayings

I give you back your liberty, Christine, on condition that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep it, you will be protected against all danger and Erik will remain your friend. But woe to you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have his revenge! — Gaston Leroux

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

Richard at once declared that we must be content with that and drop the subject. I agreed with Richard. All's well that ends well. What say you, O.G? — Gaston Leroux

Of love ... daroga ... I am dying ... of love ... That is how it is ... loved her so! ... And I love her still ... daroga ... and I am dying of love for her, I ... I tell you! ... If you knew how beautiful she was ... when she let me kiss her ... alive ... 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!" The — Gaston Leroux

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! ... I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik! — Gaston Leroux

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

One after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy. — Gaston Leroux

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

The envelope was covered with mud and unstamped. It bore the words "To be handed to M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny," with the address in pencil. It must have been flung out in the hope that a passer-by would pick up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. — Gaston Leroux

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

So Mauclair takes snuff, does he?" he asked carelessly. "'Yes, Mr. Commissary....Look, there is his snuff-box on that little shelf....Oh! he's a great snuff-taker!" "So am I," said Mifroid and put the snuff-box in his pocket. — Gaston Leroux

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

Surely, if his heart continued to make such a noise, they would hear it inside, they would open the door and the young man would be turned away in disgrace. — Gaston Leroux

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

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

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

Does he love you so much?" "He would commit murder for me. — Gaston Leroux

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

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

No, no, you have driven me mad! When I think
that I had only one object in life: to give my name to an opera wench! — Gaston Leroux

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

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

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball. — Gaston Leroux

As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back. — Gaston Leroux

Everything that concerns you interests me greatly, as you will perhaps one day come to appreciate. — Gaston Leroux

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

None will ever be true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows ... — Gaston Leroux

He {Erik} filled Christine's mind through the terror with which he inspired her, but the dear child's heart belonged wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. While they played about like an innocent engaged couple on the upper floors of the opera, to avoid the monster, they little suspected that someone was watching over them. — Gaston Leroux

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

The fresh complexion of former days was gone. A mortal pallor covered those features, which he had known so charming and so gentle, and sorrow had furrowed them into pitiless lines and traced dark and unspeakably sad shadows under her eyes. — Gaston Leroux

I sing only for you! Tonight I gave you my soul, and I'm dead! — Gaston Leroux

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

Of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through — Gaston Leroux

If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug," he said, aloud, as he went to bed, "she is lost. But I shall save her."
He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted:
"Humbug! ... Humbug! ... Humbug! — 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! — Gaston Leroux

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

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!... — Gaston Leroux

Who was big and strong, like you, M. Richard, gave two blows to M. Isidore Saack, who was small and weak like M. Moncharmin, — Gaston Leroux

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? — Gaston Leroux

The voice without a body went on singing, and certainly Raoul had never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more gloriously insidious, more powerful. — Gaston Leroux

Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give
you my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last. — Gaston Leroux

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

No, of course not ... 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. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it ... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground! - Raoul — Gaston Leroux

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

For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of
all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round
of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little
farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared,
trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practically
fainted 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, BUT
WITHOUT A BODY ATTACHED TO IT, A HEAD OF FIRE! And, as I said, a
fireman is not afraid of fire.
The fireman's name was Pampin. — Gaston Leroux

What tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and his sweet and charming Christine! ... What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again? ... — Gaston Leroux

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. — Gaston Leroux

But you would have lots of fun with me. For instance, I am the the greatest ventriloquist that ever lived, I am the first ventriloquist in the world! — Gaston Leroux

THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED. — Gaston Leroux

Raoul, you shall not pass! — Gaston Leroux

The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was "natural suicide." In — Gaston Leroux

You lie, madam, for you do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! You have taken a shameful advantage of the candid affection of your benefactress herself, who continues to believe in your sincerity while you go about the Opera ball with Red Death!...I despise you!... — Gaston Leroux

[He] prepared to forget his distress by flinging himself ... into 'the vortex of pleasure. — Gaston Leroux

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives. Believe me, etc. — Gaston Leroux

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

M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and walked backward ... before nobody ... And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing — Gaston Leroux

Destiny has chained you to me forever! — Gaston Leroux

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. — Gaston Leroux

Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - 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!" And she locked the door.

- Chapter 1: Is it the Ghost? — Gaston Leroux

For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, — Gaston Leroux

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

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

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

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

Alas, madame," Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears, "alas, I believe that Christine really does love him!...But it is not only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love!" "It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur!" said Christine, looking Raoul angrily in the face. — Gaston Leroux

He laid at my feet his immense, tragic love. — Gaston Leroux

Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even remember its name ... You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE MAN'S VOICE. — Gaston Leroux

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. — Gaston Leroux

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! — Gaston Leroux

We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost. — Gaston Leroux

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 — Gaston Leroux

He loved her so much that it almost took his breath away. — Gaston Leroux

Why do you condemn a man who you have never seen, whom no one knows about and whom you yourself know nothing? — Gaston Leroux

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

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

Madame, you will have the goodness to tell me where that genius lives." The old lady did not seem surprised at this indiscreet command. She raised her eyes and said: "In Heaven!" Such simplicity baffled him. — Gaston Leroux

Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but everybody could hear him. — Gaston Leroux

Christine, we will go from here together or die together. ~ Raoul — Gaston Leroux

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

You want the secret off my succes; my recipe? I have always brought the same care to making an adventure novel, a serialized novel, that others would bring to the making of a poem. My ambition was to raise the level of this much maligned genre. — Gaston Leroux

Tonight she's still wearing the gold ring, and you're not the one who gave it to her. Tonight she gave her soul again, but not to you. — Gaston Leroux

Love me and you'll see! To be good, all I ever needed was to be loved. If you loved me, I'd be gentle as a lamb and you could do whatever you pleased with me. — Gaston Leroux

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

He looked up in despair at the starry sky, he struck his burning chest with his fist; he loved and he was not loved! — Gaston Leroux

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

May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? ... For what hell are you leaving, mysterious lady ... or for what paradise? — Gaston Leroux

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

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. You're crying, too, daroga ... and she cried also ... the angel cried! ... — Gaston Leroux

I am the little boy who went into the sea to rescue your scarf — Gaston Leroux

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