“Her strong enchantments failing, Her towers of fear in wreck,Her limbecks dried of poisons And the knife at her neck,The Queen of air and darkness Begins to shrill and cry,`O young man, O my slayer To-morrow you shall die.'O Queen of air and darkness I think 'tis truth you say,And I shall die to-morrow; But you shall die to-day.”

“The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.”

“But I want her, I must have her, I shall die if I do not get her - false, proud, black-hearted daughter of a dog that she is! I cannot sleep and my food has no savor and my eyes are darkened because of her beauty. I must have the barbarian queen.”

“O youth! The strenght of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! (...) I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of some one dead you have loved. I shall never forget her.... Pass the bottle.”

“[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.”

“Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia... Possibly, someday, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music...”