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

“Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. She’d begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged exercise in Shelley’s personal terrors. The subtitle of the work was 'Prometheus Unbound,' and Laura wondered if Shelley herself was not Prometheus in the form of the wandering monster, who desperately sought love and acceptance but was ultimately driven to face an icy landscape that seemed almost fantastical—the way our own subconscious could be, white and frozen-slippery.”

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.”

“I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw everyday and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. (...) The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.”

“The stuff of nightmares is not only relegated to unconscious thoughts upon a pillow, safely beneath an eiderdown.”

“I have created something and let it loose upon the world. Whether it was my right to do so or not, I cannot say. At times I am filled with love for my creation. At others I am filled with regret and horror. But it is done. It has been created.”

“I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves. ”

“I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.”

“The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.”

“And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.”

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