Top 90 Gaston Leroux Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “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

3. “The opera ghost really existed.”

— Gaston Leroux

4. “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

5. “In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.”

— Gaston Leroux

6. “Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, My spirit longs with thee to rest.”

— Gaston Leroux

7. “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

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “She’s singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!”

— Gaston Leroux

15. “When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever.”

— Gaston Leroux

16. “But do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?”

— Gaston Leroux

17. “Persons visited by the angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind.”

— Gaston Leroux

18. “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

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

— Gaston Leroux

20. “We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost.”

— Gaston Leroux

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

— Gaston Leroux

22. “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

23. “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

24. “Music has the power to make one forget everything save those sounds that touch your heart.”

— Gaston Leroux

25. “Your soul is a beautiful thing, child,” replied the grave man’s voice, “and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift.”

— Gaston Leroux

26. “I moved closer to him, attracted, fascinated: in the midst of such passion, death itself became appealing...”

— Gaston Leroux

27. “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

28. “Destiny has chained you to me forever!”

— Gaston Leroux

29. “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

30. “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

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

— Gaston Leroux

32. “He loved her so much that it almost took his breath away.”

— Gaston Leroux

33. “Christine, you must love me!” And Christine’s voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied: “How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!”

— Gaston Leroux

34. “I am mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control them, and I will beg you to desist henceforth.”

— Gaston Leroux

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

— Gaston Leroux

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

— Gaston Leroux

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

— Gaston Leroux

38. “You clearly love him! Your fears, your terror, all of that is still born of love, and love of that most exquisite kind, the kind that one does not admit even to oneself. The kind that gives you a thrill when you think of it.”

— Gaston Leroux

39. “Everything that concerns you interests me greatly, as you will perhaps one day come to appreciate.”

— Gaston Leroux

40. “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

41. “His horrible, unique, and repulsive ugliness put him beyond the pale of humanity, and it had often been apparent to me that for this reason he no longer felt he had any obligations to the human race.”

— Gaston Leroux

42. “When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh.”

— Gaston Leroux

43. “I sing only for you! Tonight I gave you my soul, and I’m dead!”

— Gaston Leroux

44. “A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!”

— Gaston Leroux

45. “My lies were as hideous as the monster that had inspired them.”

— Gaston Leroux

46. “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

47. “He laid at my feet his immense, tragic love.”

— Gaston Leroux

48. “As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back.”

— Gaston Leroux

49. “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

50. “His manner, his words – everything about him told me to trust him.”

— Gaston Leroux