Frankenstein Novel Quotes

Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? ~ Mary Shelley

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. ~ Mary Shelley

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these acquisitions; but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profit of the chosen few. And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded their's. When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? ~ Mary Shelley

I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. ~ Mary Shelley

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. ~ Mary Shelley

Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested. ~ Mary Shelley

I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel ... ~ Mary Shelley

We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves - such a friend ought to be - do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. ~ Mary Shelley

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

You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again. ~ Patricia Duncker

Tucking my nose into a book makes me completely oblivious to my surroundings. I would have made a terrible spy in the army
the first person to hand me a novel would have been able to shoot my head clean off without me noticing. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

The ugly fact is books are made out of books, the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written. ~ Cormac McCarthy

To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don't have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be. ~ John Braine

But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I felt that there was potential here to go on and write an engaging story set in that world. So that's what I did. This probably ruins things both for the people who want small literary novels and for those who want action-packed epics, but anyway, it's what I wrote. ~ Neal Stephenson

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [ ... ], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did. ~ Muriel Spark

The people inside were in intense worship; it seemed to Sarah like they were in another world or something. The pleasantness in the atmosphere drew her in. She felt welcomed, even though she had not been invited; noticed, even though she had not been seen; loved, even though she wasn't known; and even though it didn't make sense to her - it didn't have to. ~ Calvin W. Allison

It began with a perfect plan. Shape-wise we had a circle, a simple uncomplicated curve to guide us comfortably from one thing to another, an easy predictable ride promising a natural progression from A to B, C and D, and so on until we reached our destination. But somewhere down that smooth line, I think around F, it all went pear-shaped. ~ Ivana Hruba

I play the music of Steven
for Steven;
ragged, helpless,
it owns me, enveloping me
with an incomprehensible love - ~ Stasia Ward Kehoe

Lonesome Dove is a great book that had the rare fortune of being made into a great movie. And now, through Bill Wittliff's photographs, we have a third generation of Lonesome Dove artistry. The same creative power and conviction that allowed Larry McMurtry to transform a workaday scenario for an unproduced screenplay into one of the greatest novels of our time, and that transformed that novel into the greatest western movie ever made, are on display in this collection. A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove is a masterpiece begot by a masterpiece begot by a masterpiece. ~ Stephen Harrigan

I think a good novel is a slow reveal--of the character and the plot. It's a process of discovery for the reader. ~ Mark Rubinstein

when you walk the path of revenge, know that someone will always follow your trail ~ Aziz Hamza

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder. ~ Ned Beauman

1. Sometimes music is needed.
2. Sometimes silence.
3. A novel, like all written things, is a piece of music, the language demanding you make a sound as you read it. Writing one, then, is like remembering a song you've never heard before. ~ Alexander Chee

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it. ~ Sherry Thomas

A disastrous flaw in our design is that the heart always defies the brain. ~ Piper Payne

An economy open to new concepts and novel ventures is bound to generate unequal gains. ~ Edmund Phelps

Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels. ~ Jose Saramago

Why would a novel - which is all about the inward processes of people's developing feelings and developing relationships - why would you be able to portray that in pictures with as few words as possible, which is what the best films are? ~ Sebastian Faulks

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart. ~ Linda W. Yezak

Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage. ~ Jonathan Franzen

This hell on earth is unlike anything that's ever taken place. Who knows when it will end, or if it ever will? We might all be in for a lot of pain in the near future, so we need to be strong and we need to stick together. There's no telling how bad things will get. ~ Jason Medina

I see it all. I feel it all. I am inspired. My eyes fill with tears. Yet even as I feel this. I lash my frenzy higher and higher. It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop - how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot fly with them, scattering women and string bags. There is some flaw in me - some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity ~ Virginia Woolf

To reprise language from the previous chapter, the solution isn't algorithmic (following a set path) but heuristic (breaking from the path to discover a novel strategy). ~ Daniel H. Pink

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience. ~ Thomas Perry

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. ~ Louis D. Brandeis

I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale. ~ George R R Martin

I've always felt as if writing a novel is like giving birth. After the process is over, I am emotionally exhausted. But then the work's not done. I have to then raise the book to adulthood, through marketing and giveaways and pandhandling for reviews (its college education). And even while I'm nurturing it into something that is well adjusted and lovable, I've got other "kids" that need equal attention. It truly is work. My hat is off to real parents everywhere, who raise human children and novel ones at the same time. You are amazing. ~ Ash Gray

As for his sudden change of heart, he had suddenly remembered the end of Mansfield Park, and how Edmund fell out of love with Mary Crawford and came to care for Fanny. Dulcie must surely know the novel well, and would understand how such things can happen. ~ Barbara Pym

As Rollin put it in his book The Frankenstein Syndrome, 'It is simply false that all genetic engineering must harm animals. Unless one assumes that all species of animals exist currently at their maximal possible state of happiness or well-being of welfare, such a claim is not legitimate. ~ Emily Anthes

When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal. ~ Nick Tosches

But at [soccer] tournaments you tend to see novel, unanticipated trends coming through, with everyone watching each other like hawks and immediately copying anything new. What is really important for every team is to be aware of its own capabilities and find a style which plays to one's own strengths. ~ Michael Ballack

A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings. ~ Jay Neugeboren

In film you can use images exclusively and narrate a whole story very quickly, but you don't always so easily find the form in cinema to dig deeper into human thoughts and emotions. And in a novel you can much more easily express a character's inner thoughts and feelings. ~ Laura Esquivel

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character. ~ Salman Rushdie

Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish. ~ Kate Atkinson

It seems strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandanged and their ears stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were looking down as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty changing congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making music that might draw angels out of heaven ... God himself is preaching his sublimest water and stone sermons! ~ John Muir

I recommend readers to be adventurous and to try things they've never heard of or considered reading before. Get out of the comfort zone and discover something new and exciting. If you'd never be caught dead in the mystery section go and read some George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly or many others. If you only read thrillers get deep into the literary fiction aisle and let yourself be seduced. If you only read non-fiction pick up a Ian McDonald novel or a Joyce Carol Oates novel. If you only read comic books, get acquainted with the great Charles Dickens or a certain Monsieur Dumas. Pick up something at random and read a page. Feel the texture of the language, the architecture of the imagery, the perfume of the style… There's so much beauty, intelligence and excitement to be had between the pages of the books waiting for you at your local bookstore the only thing you need to bring is an open mind and a sense of adventure. Disregard all prejudices, all pre-conceived notions and all the rubbish some people try to make you think. Think for yourself. Regarding books or anything in life. Think for yourself. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. ~ Orson Scott Card

I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have written a scene, make sure they are all there, or that if one or another is missing, it is intentional and the effect is what you want. ~ Phyllis A. Whitney

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control non-compliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay our of the world. IF you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences on speech, this is what it looks like. ~ Lindy West

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar. ~ Craig Ferguson