The Phantom of the Opera quotes

All I wanted was to be loved for myself.

— Spoken by a character · XXII. In the Torture Chamber

'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!

— Spoken by a character · XII. Apollo's Lyre

Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice!

— Spoken by a character · XII. Apollo's Lyre

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball; and the foyer of the ballet is the last place in which two men so "knowing" as M. Debienne and M. Poligny would have made the mistake of betraying their grief, however genuine it might be.

Are people so unhappy when they love?

— Spoken by a character · XIII. A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover

"You are frightened ... but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?"

— Spoken by a character · XII. Apollo's Lyre

He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.

"I don't know myself when I sing," writes the poor child.

— Spoken by a character · V. The Enchanted Violin

He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull.

— Spoken by a character · I. Is it the Ghost?

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.

"You don't love me! You don't love me! You don't love me!"

— Spoken by a character · XXII. In the Torture Chamber

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.

I can't go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays.

— Spoken by a character · XXII. In the Torture Chamber

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, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer!

— Spoken by a character · XXVI. The End of the Ghost's Love Story

Nothing was colder than his heart, nothing half so dead: he had loved an angel and now he despised a woman!

If Christine's Angel had existed, he could not have played better, that night, on the late musician's violin.

— Spoken by a character · V. The Enchanted Violin