This Monstrous Thing

...you made a human being. And humans are, by nature, monstrous.

We're all monsters. We're all careless and cruel in the end.

You’re either good, or you’re clever.

Perhaps we all said the right things at the wrong time; perhaps we couldn't help it. Perhaps words became too heavy to haul, and the moment we let them loose was always the wrong one, but they needed to be free.

Not all monsters do monstrous things.

You took my life and Oliver's life and made them into this book. You made us into monsters, both of us.

You've not been an idiot. It's hard to believe that the people we love can do terrible things to us.

You can't make people the way you want them to be, Alasdair. Sometimes you just have to love them how they are.

Have you ever thought," she countered, "that maybe Oliver only acts like a monster because you treat him like one?

What I meant is that I sometimes feel as though everyone around me is trying so hard to be complicated and coy all the time, but you're so sincere in everything. You make me remember people can mean what they say.

Perhaps I didn't really know anyone. Perhaps everyone was just a fiction inside my head.

Her mouth twisted into a sly smile. "How disappointing. A pretty girl's about the only thing that would keep me in a shithole like Geneva.

his clockwork heart and his clockwork lungs and every piece of the clockwork that would bring him back.

I did something wrong and ruined him. I made him into a monster.” “I doubt that very much. From what Mrs. Shelley said, you made a human being. And human beings, are, by nature, monstrous.