Mary Shelley

The deep connections of the soul are not to be broken by the accidents of life.

I have no power to give you happiness, but I could make you an object and a cause of misery.

My heart was full of a thousand conflicting emotions.

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

I was never so mad as to believe that I could create a being.

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me.

I have often thought that the world is a vast prison, where the greater part of mankind are condemned to wear their fetters.

Dreams are but the reflections of our waking hours.

The event of my imagination, now in the wildest play, suggested the following train of ideas.

I had been the author of unutterable evils.

What does it avail that I am in the midst of a garden, if the flowers bloom not for me?

I am a solitary being, and I have ever been so.

The human mind is a wonderful thing; it can create and destroy, it can love and hate.

I was an outcast in the world.

When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less than on the failure of my hopes, I was filled with a bitter anguish.

My imagination was always my best friend.

We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, kinder, better than ourselves, do not take us in hand.

Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.

My imagination is dead, my genius lost, my energies sleep.

White paper - wilt thou be my confident? I will trust thee fully, for none shall see what I write.