'None of us can choose where we will love.' -Erik, (this is the quote on one of the first few pages in te book)

  'His abnormally accelerated development showed no sign of slowing down. By the age of four he was reading the bible with beautiful clarity and mastering exercises on the violin and piano . . . He climbed like a monkey and there was nothing I could place beyond the reach of his determined hands. He repeatedly dismantled my clocks and threw the most appalling tantrums at his inability to put them back together. He could not bear to be defeated by inanimate objects.'
-Madeline

     "There is nothing I cannot do, if I choose." -Erik

    'The yellow light of his lantern showed me his powerful, shadowed figure enveloped in the familiar swirling cloak, made the mask and the frills of his dress shirt seem luminously white. Darkness framed him so magnificently showed only what he wanted my to see.' -Christine

   'it is not a voice which belongs to this world ; it is far, far too beautiful to be human'  -Christine

    'Perfection, always perfection . . . nothing less would ever do in anything to which he set his mind.' -Christine

   'But music was the keystone of his extraordinary genius. Music welled up from some bottomless pool within him and flowed like a ceaseless fountain through his fingertips...' -Madeleine

     I can make anything disappear if I want to... Anything except my face. -Erik

    'All I wanted was to be like everyone else' -Erik

    'Perfect pitch, a crystal clarity of tone, no weakness in either register . . . this girl possessed a near perfect instrument!
    And lacked the inner will to play it!
    I had never heard a voice so sweet and true, nor one as utterly negative. Her boundless potential lay almost wholly untapped, like a rich vein of gold buried deep beneath the dead weight of strangling indifference. There was nothing there except faultless technique. She sang without soul  . . . no expression, no joy, no sorrow . . . nothing! . . .
    There was something wrong with this girl, a near extinction of spirit that made her voice affect me like a cry in the dark. She was slowly dying on that stage, drowning in my ears . . . I must not think what I might have made of that lovely, lifeless voice had it been entrusted to my care.'
-Erik's first impression of Christine

     'Even in silence there was music in his hands, a cadence which seemed to flow irresistibly through his fingertips.' -Christine

    Such a little thing really, as kiss... most people don't give it a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh that people take entirely for granted as a basic human right." -Erik

   "It was something my mother drummed into me very early... I couldn't have been two when she began to refuse to fasten my buttons and tie my mask in place. I remember her throwing a pole of clothes at me one day in a temper- she had a terrible temper, Christine, I daresay that's where I get mine from - 'Do it yourself!' she snapped, 'You're simply going to  have to learn to do things for yourself!' I sat in my room all day because I couldn't fasten that bloody mask and I didn't care to go downstairs without it. Sacha would have helped me if she could, but poor Sacha didn't know how to do it either... all she could do was lick the tears off my face... dogs like tears, did you know that?" -Erik

    'He moved like a cat, with a lithe. flowing grace that made him pleasing to watch... in spite of his height, he had none of the gawkishness normally associated with his age.'  -Giovanni

    'I'm beginning to realize just how much of a child she really is, how terrifyingly immature and vulnerable . . . even unstable. There's a fatal flaw running though her like a crack in a Ming Dynasty vase, but that imperfection makes me love her with even greater tenderness.'  -Erik

   'I found him standing by the pipe organ in full evening dress, wearing the mask, a wide-brimmed felt hat and the most beautiful black cloak. He looked suddenly so strong, so incredibly powerful, that I felt my hands begin to tremble against the tray. I've never seen him on his feet before, I didn't realize he was so tall . . . and yet I seemed to recognize the inherent authority - the awesome majesty! - with which he was now invested... ' -Christine

    'I hated broken promises and dishonored pledges; I hated going back on my word. Disappointment is such an exhausting emotion- all that energy dissipated first in painful hoping and then in futile, hopeless resentment.' -Erik

    'Nothing in his grim and austere appearance had prepared me for his voice.... It's astonishing beauty was quite unmistakable.. for it was necessary to hear the extraordinary resonance and depth of timbre to truly understand the magnitude of its power. I never expected to hear such a voice outside paradise.' -Nadir

    'I'd totally dismantled this child... taken her to pieces in my crazed determination to make her heart tick in harmony with my own. I'd taught her to sing like one of God's angels, I'd loved her more than anything else upon this earth... but my love had destroyed her, reduced her to a pitiful creature barely aware of her own actions... made her as mad as I was myself.' -Erik

    'He had given me the wings of an angel and taught me how to fly.' -Christine

    'Slowly, hesitantly, as though fighting against the wavering instincts of a lifetime, he offered his gloved hand to help me ascend the carriage step. It was the first time he had ever directly invited physical contact from me and the moment was fraught with tense significance for us both. My fingers had only to close that little distance between us and I would be a child to him no longer.
    In the moonlight his gloved hand was elusively normal; it looked warm and strong and quite curiously reassuring, the hand not of a monster and a murderer, but of a gentle, loving man, who waited with infinite patience for one little sign of hope . . .' -Christine

     "I want to build something beautiful... something in this world that he would have been proud of. There had to be a purpose in being in this world.... There has to be some  purpose in living..." -Erik

    'My voice was my only one beauty, my only one power, my only hope; my voice would open a magic pathway into her life. -Erik

    'I realized that his voice had become, for me, a drug as powerful as morphine, necessary to my senses, vital to my existence. His silence was a punishment beyond my strength to bear.' -Christine

  "It is customary to barter before purchasing items in a bazaar," I reminded him sternly. "The wretch is asking at least four times what she seriously hopes to receive."
    He glanced at the infant on the woman's lap and then at the small, pinched face peering from behind her shoulder.
    "She is poor and she has children to feed. I am able to pay the price she asks without hardship... why should I stand here and haggle with here like a miser?"
    "She expects it, Erik... I tell you, it is the custom."
    "F### your customs!" He said succinctly.
I watched dumbfounded as he dropped double the asking price into the woman's trembling hand...
    "Now," he said, turning to me cheerfully, "tell me where I can buy an opium pipe and at least a crate of that heavenly poppy cake one burns inside it." -Nadir

     'My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain . . . for as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.' -Erik

    'I never put another spider on her shawl after that . . .
    This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex. She had dropped one pearl of purity into my soul, and even now, after all these years, it was still there, displacing a little of the dank, disgusting sludge of depravity. I had done many terrible things, but I had never harmed a helpless woman.' -Erik

     "There's so much darkness in my head, sometimes it frightens me too... but it need not be like this, Christine. If I could just live like other men, walk through the Bois in daylight and feel the sun and wind upon my naked face... Oh Christine, I would be dare to do so many things if you were there beside me as my wife." -Erik

    'I would keep my pride this time, no tears, no degrading groveling to make me burn with shame at the memory. Pride was all I would have left to sustain me through the ordeal of her refusal; pride would make me wish her well and let us part with civilized courtesy...' -Erik

    'She was a lovely, wilting flower that I longed to rescue from the strangling creep of weeds. I wanted to plant  her safely in the labyrinth beneath the Opera House, to hide her from the world so that no one else should ever find he, hurt her . . . take her away from me. I could make her grow . . . I knew I could make her grow . . . if only I dared to reach out and lift her from the barren, acrid soil that was stifling her natural talent.'  -Erik

 'She wanted an Angel of Music . . . an angel who would make her believe in herself at last.
    I'd been the Angel of Doom for the khanum. There was no reason in the world why I could not be the Angel of Music for Christine. I couldn't hope to be a man to her, I couldn't ever be a real, breathing, living man waking at her side and reaching out for her . . .
    But I could be her angel' -Erik

     'Guilt, I thought, with a flicker of remorse for my heartlessness ... guilt is surely the saddest of all human emotions. But guilt is not love; it is a fire that consumes without giving warmth to those not embraced in its tangled coils.' -Erik

    'A thin lasso whipped through the air, neatly garroting the intruder with one , swift, savage jerk, and the man fell dead in the churning mud almost before I had time to blink. I was dumbstruck by that lightening reflex, and automatic, merciless response which betrayed all the instincts of a jungle predator to whom killing is as natural and commonplace as breathing. He had killed many times before, many times; of that simple fact there could be no question of doubt.'
-Nadir
 
     'I know he's going to spoil everything, blunder into the delicate fabric of my dream and rip it to shreds. If he doesn't stop hanging around her soon, he's going to meet with a fatal accident . . .' -Erik

     'He moved with a slow majesty, as though his whole body was informed by the rhythm of  a music he alone could hear...'  -Christine

    'The thought of that white rose filled me with bitter shame... Yearning to turn and reach out to him, I remained unable to conquer that inner fear; it was a chasm I dared not cross. And so I sat there, like the little mouse in Aesop's fable, not daring to look upon the lion bound by cruel ropes. Chained by fate and shackled by pride, he starved in silent pain; and because I lacked the courage of a rose, I could not set him free.'  -Christine

    'Hell is not a place, it's a state of mind and body; hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name ...' -Erik

   'Once I choose to look with Luciana's eyes it was very easy to see and
understand the primitive allure of the almost regal dignity, the curious, hypnotic quality of that unique voice. Beneath my roof I was sheltering a young prince of darkness. The sensuality of power radiated from his every move, but he remained unaware of his extraordinary ability to attract... But he was blind to see the most essential element of his magnetism. Someone had taught him to expect only rejection and revulsion in the world and now, in the natural shyness of youth, he was merely repeating to himself whatever painful lessons he had been forced to learn by rote in childhood.' -Giovanni

     'Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine.
    It doesn't last very long' -Erik

     ..."Ah, well..." he mused with a sort of dreamy, distant sadness, "...hell is full of burning boats, did you know that Nadir... I daresay that's what makes it so bloody hot." -Erik

   'I do not languish in his power like a pale prisoner, denied the light of day, but I grow ever upwards beneath the benevolent sun of his genius. Where once I was content to be a wilting marigold, I now aspire to the glorious height of a sunflower. He has captured all the wonders of the universe, enchanting baubles that reflect shafts of incandescent light. And like the child, starved of toys, I reach out eagerly with both hands, turning my back gladly on the world I left behind.' -Christine

More quotes for those of you who have read the book.

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