Susan Kay citations

“And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!”

“All beauty must have its imperfections, all happiness its share of sorrow.”

“I had reached up and pulled the castle of dreams down around him.”

“Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.”

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

“Killing is like riding, you see, one never really loses the knack.”

“Ah, well… hell is full of burning boats, did you know that, Nadir? I daresay that's what makes it so bloody hot.”

“Awful things!… truly awful. The floor in our dressing room starts to run with blood… disembodied hands come out of the wall and crawl across the stage.”

“I have often thought I would have been quite happy as a spider.
Even a spider has the right to a mate.”

“For a moment I thought I knew exactly how Christ must have felt as He called John.”

“I can make anything disappear, if I really want to.”

“Up in box five I blinked in surprised amusement. That was a new one! Little Giry should be writing Gothic novels, not prancing around the stage dressed as a water nymph!”

“The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. The corps de ballet were already calling me "the Phantom of the Opera," an intriguing sobriquet which appealed to me very strongly, until I realized that it would mean signing my ransom notes P. T. O. One did not wish to descend to the ridiculous!
O. G. I became and O. G. I have remained.
But I still liked to think of myself as the Phantom.”

“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 love, no woman will ever look on me in love.”

“Night after night the nightingale came to beg for divine love, but though the rose trembled at the sound of his voice, her petals remained closed to him…
Flower and bird, two species never meant to mate. Yet at length the rose overcame her fear and from that single, forbidden union was born the red rose that Allah never intended the world to know.”

“Death was the ultimate power and I his eager, willing apprentice.”

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

“Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination.”