Memorable Erik Quotes


"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."

"Killing is like opium, Nadir... it's a bad habit... an addiction..." 
"But ... but people must have been killed!" "Oh, yes ... I daresay that's quite likely! It's really very difficult to be a murderer without killing people from time to time,
you know."

"Are you so sure a small jar would contain me, madame?"

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

"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.... But as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love."

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

"..and it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!"

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

"My mouth dropped open in astonishment, for nothing in his grim and austere appearance had prepared me for his voice. Even in that cold, clipped comment its astonishing beauty was quite unmistakable. Only those who heard him speak and sing will ever know just what a voice could be, for it was necessary to hear the extraordinary resonance and depth of timbre to truly understand the magnitude of his power. I never expected to hear such a voice outside paradise. To encounter it here, in this drafty, ill-lit tent, held its own kind of terror, for who was he-what was he?- to be possessed of such divinity of sound? That first moment when I heard him speak I wondered whether I beheld an angel or a devil; and even now, after all these years, it is a question I still ask myself. For each time I thought I finally knew the answer, he would only confound me once again."

"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!"

Christine:  "Neither innocence nor ignorance was a shield against the music that was deep inside me now, gathering a throbbing momentum that made me twist and writhe, reaching out instinctively into the shadows as though to pull some unseen presence down upon me. My arms had wrapped around the pillow and I rode each thrusting note until the crescendo burst inside my head, flooding my entire body with extraordinary sensation. When the organ stopped I lay still in the darkness listening to the slowing drum of my heart in the awesome silence. Was this what he had meant by danger?"

He's not ugly, he's not some kind of monster! I won't let him be ugly, Papa... I won't let him be!"

"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"

"I don't have much call for handkercheifs, my dear... There are certain advantages, you see, in being without a nose."

"Happiness? Is this what it feels like, this surge of warmth and physical euphoria? Oh Christine, if there were a loving God in heaven it would be my arm you take now, my shoulder upon which you lean in your utter exhaustion. ...Beneath the mask my face is wet with tears."

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

"You'd think that I wouldn't remember... But I recall everything. Everything. I was cursed with these extraordinary powers of recollection..."

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

"I rocked her in the sweet tide of my music until she slept in my embrace and then for a long time I simply held her, cherishing the weight of her body in my arms and the slight pressure of her head against my shoulder. So light and fragile! She seemed no more than a child...a dead child lying in my arms."

"I love you, Erik, I love you in so many different ways...but my love is the love of a child afraid to grow up."

"A long time she held me, as though she could not bear to let me go, and when at last we drew apart, we stared at each other with silent awe, dazed by the intensity of what we had shared. It was finished then, of course...that kiss ended everything. The moment I knew she was mine - - truly mine - - I knew I could not kill that wretched boy."

"I trusted you! I trusted you to treat me like a civilized human being and come back with your answer. All these months I've worshipped you like some sacred vestal virgin... I've never even touched you! And you wouldn't come back... you wouldn't even come back and say goodbye. There was nothing I would not have done for you, nothing...Christ, I even killed to please you! Do you remember the spiders there they were, harmless creatures, minding their own business and hoping to be left in peace. But oh no, you wanted them killed because they were ugly and frightened you. Well there's someone I'm frightened of too, Christine, someone I've been frightened of for a long, long time, and tonight I'm going to make him disappear so I won't ever be frightened again. I'm a wonderful magician, you see Christine, I can make anyone disappear, if I really want to."

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