Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein

Father didn't expect us to sew, or play with dolls like other girls. Instead he gave us the books our mother had written, and encouraged us to read. He taught us independence is admirable, and imagination indispensable.

Home is a place in the mind where thoughts grow rich enough to become stories, breaking the silence that exists between souls.

WANT I want to hold Shelley with the force of an eagle taming the wind within its wings. I want to grasp him unfailingly, like a gentle moth dancing with flame. I want to have strength enough to beat off the beasts that dwell within his heart. I want to believe in impossible promises and shift the world so they can be kept. I want to be more than a girl selling books in a bankrupt shop.

Home is not an address with fine curtains and fancy furnishings. Home is a place in the mind where thoughts grow rich enough to become stories, breaking the silence that exists between souls.

I AM SEVENTEEN Already I am daughter to a ghost and mother to bones.

Science gives us the ability to pull back the skin of life and reveal the truth of things. It allows us to understand the mysteries of mountain-making and falling stars. But knowledge isn't meant to be held as a weapon in a battle to defy our fates and manipulate life over death. Evil lodges too easily in men's hearts. What will happen if they assume the power to create life?

They will be scorned and considered loathsome, because people reject those who don’t fit their vision of a perfect ideal.

I stand at the entrance of our door, where the room seems dark and the bookshelves bend, more with the weight of disappointment than with books.