Hruu. Susan Kay's novel "Phantom" is quite possibly the most beautiful novel I've ever read. There are so many beautiful quotes, but I just limited this entry to the ones that really convey Erik's feelings. Sigh. So sad.

These are just from the novel "Phantom". There are also a few notable ones in Gaston Leroux's original version. I'll probably put that in a separate entry.


All the quotes are from Erik.



"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."


"Such a little thing really, a 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 is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right. I've lived on this earth half a century without knowing what it is to be kissed ... and I'll never know now."


"My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever 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, I learn in vain. . . . .For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love."


"I am like everyone else! Inside I am just like everyone else! Why can't people understand that?"
  

"You're always looking. What a pity you never quite manage to see."


"Hell is not a place. It's an obsession with a voice, a face, a name."


"You want me to kill it? . . . Oh, I don't mind at all. I rather think the spider might have one or two objections to make-but then, after all, it's only a spider, isn't it? Just a mindless, soulless, ugly thing that has no right to live and frighten people!"


"I have already agreed to your damned eccentric terms, have I not? At least permit me to make one gesture of myself toward my keeper . . . and my friend."


"I see you don't care for my voice half as well when it speaks of things you do not wish to hear. Simple words can be reduced to obscenities by my tongue, can they not? .... Wife ... Husband ... Love"


"None of us can choose where we will love."



And a very sad quote from Giovanni:

"There was so much beauty in your soul, Erik, so much beauty that I fear now, because of (one old man's) folly, will never see the light of day."


And one more from Nadir or the Daroga:

"...and whatever else you may have been in your time, Erik, you've always been a gentleman....haven't you?"