...the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders who gave the explanation in a trembling voice: “It’s the ghost!

Everybody knows that orthopaedic science provides beautiful false noses for those who have lost their noses naturally or as the result of an operation.

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.

Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!

When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever.

Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.