Did I request thee maker from my clay to mould me man?
Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?
-- Adam (prologue to "Frankenstein" from
Milton’s "Paradise Lost")

Even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep. My imagination unbidden possessed and guided me with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw with shut eyes. I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling besides the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out and then on the working of some powerful engine show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half vital motion...
-- Mary Shelley

Why do you recall to my remembrance circumstances that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil in which you first saw light! Cursed, although I curse myself, be the hands that formed you! Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? I thought if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. 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. The rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out when by the glimmer of half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open. It breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. Cursed be the day, abhorred devil in which you first saw light! Cursed although I curse myself be the hands that formed you!
-- Dr. Frankenstein

Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? How can I move thee? Will no intreaties cause thee to turn a favorable eye upon thy creature? I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.
-- The Creature

Frightful it might be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His
success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he
had communicated would fade; that this thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter…
-- Mary Shelley