Mary Shelley

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

I do not wish to be thought of as a woman working in literature, but as a writer.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion.

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.

How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.

I am malicious because I am miserable.

My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you can scarcely imagine.

I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.

Solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

The human senses are imperfect organs for the reception of truth.

I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in works of love and benevolence, now saw myself deprived of all intercourse with my fellow creatures and left alone with the demon of the imagination.

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.

There is a love that gives life, and a love that takes it away.

The die is cast; I have consented to return if I am not destroyed.

My dreams were at first replete with the terrible image of my monster; but by degrees I became calm.

I was not made for the world, but the world was made for me.