Quotes & Sayings About Frankenstein

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. — Mary Shelley

Some have said that 'Frankenstein' is a story of a bad parenting giving rise to a troubled child. — Dave Morris

Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out of them; the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, I made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for every crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent. — Mark Twain

You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. - Victor Frankenstein. — Mary Shelley

Jocko likes salty, Jocko likes sweet, but never bring Jocko any hot sauce, like with jalapenos, because it makes Jocko squirt funny-smelling stuff out his ears. — Dean Koontz

Cassie Wright's largest audience, the only part of her audience still growing, is composed of sixteen-to-twenty-five-year-old men. These men buy her backlist movies, her plastic breast relics and pocket vaginas, but not for any erotic purpose. They collect the blow-up sex surrogates and signature lingerie as some form of religious relics. Souvenirs of the real mother, the perfect mother they never had. Frankenstein parts or religious totems of the mother they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to find -who'll praise them enough, support them enough, love them enough. — Chuck Palahniuk

Her brown eyes flashed like headlamps on a police cruiser, cameras at a Superbowl kickoff, lightning over Frankenstein's
castle. — Dennis Vickers

I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. "Wretch!" I said, "it is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! if he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power. — Mary Shelley

Standing there at Powell's grave, telling my nephew about a buried skull, I realize how much of our relationship revolves around body parts and severed heads. Once Owen learned to walk, we started playing a game I call Frankenstein, in which I am Frankenstein's monster and I chase him around trying to harvest his organs and appendages because my master is building another boy. "Frankenstein needs your spleen," I yell, aping the voice of an announcer at a monster truck rally. "Give me your spleen!" Which is why the seemingly gross book I gave him for his birthday, a collection of poetry for children called The Blood-Hungry Spleen was actually a sentimental choice, even though my sister tells me it didn't go over so well when he brought it to preschool. — Sarah Vowell

I am not getting you a brain, because I am not that kind of assistant, Dr. Frankenstein. — Rachel Caine

Frankenstein can be a metaphor for abandonment, or wanting to be accepted for who you are, or not liking who you are and wanting to actually change that. — Kevin Grevioux

Short blonde hair, big rectangular forehead, like Frankenstein made a second monster, and that monster loved death metal and Twinkies. — Scott Kelly

For me, it was never a choice not to play the game because I was never attracted to it in the first place. I have plenty of friends who get stalked by the paparazzi, but it's not anything you'd aspire to. Fame is like Frankenstein's monster - once you've created it, it can get out of control. — Robert B. Weide

I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness. — James Anthony Froude

My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein. I'm going to misquote it horribly, but the monster says, "I have such love in me, more than you can imagine. But, if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear." — Guillermo Del Toro

It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being ... — Mary Shelley

In some sense, we're all cavemen - we can't imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality - that's actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts ... or Rubinstein's monsters ... or is that Wallenstein?"
"Frankenstein. — Arkady Strugatsky

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

I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that. — Gene Wilder

Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. — Mary Shelley

Love was everyone's to experience if they opened their hearts, but true love was a rare and sterling thing, damn if it wasn't, a sterling thing that required the intervention of destiny: two hearts fated to be as one, finding each other among the billions of the world. True love, by God, was the Excalibur of emotions, and if you recognized it when you saw it, if you drew that noble, shining blade from the stone, your life would be a grand adventure even if you lived it entirely in one small town. — Dean Koontz

The truth was stranger than the official fiction. — Dean Koontz

Tony Stark/Iron Man, like Victor Frankenstein before him, has built the monster that may make his worst fear a reality. And now he and his friends are locked into the battle with the monster sworn to destroy them. — Chris Soth

If she can bite a vulture, she can jump a crack.
~Victor Frankenstein — Kenneth Oppel

The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's.
Hmmmmm.
Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in.
Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect? — Lisi Harrison

'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms. — Kenneth Branagh

No more let life devide what death can join together. — Victor Frankenstein

Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again. — David Sedaris

The Fomorians skittered backward, away from me, looking justifiably confused. I mean, really, how many human women actually run to them? And I was a human woman covered in swamp yuck, with wild red hair sticking out in matted hunks and arms flailing like a demented Bride of Frankenstein. I'd run from me. — P.C. Cast

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? — Mary Shelley

was thinking - um, maybe you should let me do the talking." He glanced over at her. "What are you saying? That I'm scary?" "You're the scariest person I've ever met." "Thank you," he said with a wicked smile. "That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time." "No, really. You're scarier than Frankenstein." He chuckled. "You're so scary that a great white shark would put on tennis shoes and run up the beach to get away from you." His chuckle turned into a laugh. "I mean it," she said, getting into the spirit of it. "If the boogey man was in your closet, he'd stay there until you left for work." "Okay, okay," he said, holding up one hand while trying to stop laughing. "I got it. When we find the girl, you can do the talking." She nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. — Arthur Bradley

I hated the sight on TV of big, clumsy, lumbering heavyweights plodding, stalking each other like two Frankenstein monsters, clinging, slugging toe to toe. I knew I could do it better ... circle, dance, shuffle, hit and move ... make an art out of it. — Muhammad Ali

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly: That's not so ignorant after all. There are two monsters in my story, not one And one of them, the scientist, is indeed named Frankenstein. — Kurt Vonnegut

It will be a world made not bright but brighter, not clean but cleaner. — Dean Koontz

Can you just saw his arm off while we're here and get me loose? (Amanda)
I could do that, but he needs his more. I'd cut yours off before I did his. (Tate)
Oh, great, what are you, his Igor? (Amanda)
Wrong movie, Igor was Frankenstein's flunky. Renfield is the one you're thinking of, and no, I'm not Renfield. Name's Tate Bennett. Parish coroner. (Tate) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Will you look at this," Grandma said. "Closed casket. Isn't this a fine howdy-do. I get dressed up and come out to pay my respects, and I don't even get to see anything."
Martha Deeter was shot and autopsied. They'd taken her brain out to get weighed. After she was put back together she probably looked like Frankenstein. I was personally relieved to see a closed casket. — Janet Evanovich

When I was old enough to go to movies alone, I got to see 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula' on the big screen. I just fell in love with them. — George A. Romero

I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly 'Frankenstein' had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there's one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues. — Edgar Winter

The atomic bomb which we dropped on the people of Hiroshima was first envisioned by a woman, not a man. She was, of course, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. She didn't call it an "atomic bomb." She called it "the monster of Frankenstein. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I'd never imagined myself writing at all until I was almost 30. And horror films weren't to my taste, at least the super popular (slasher-y) ones of the day back then. The first novel I ever loved as a kid was Frankenstein, and I was always a crazy Hitchcock and Polanski fan ... but I never saw myself - a square spazzy girl from the suburbs - writing anything that would horrify anyone. Or so I thought ... — Karen Walton

I gently lift her up and study her Frankenstein scar. it's like she's now assembled from two differnt dogs:the puppy who will always want to play, and the senior dog who must come to understand her limits. — Steven Rowley

The Frankenstein of Communism is the product of the Jewish mind, and was turned loose upon the world by the son of a Rabbi, Karl Marx, in the hopes of destroying Christian civilization - as well as others. The testimony given before the Senate of the United States which is take from the many pages of the Overman Report, reveals beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jewish bankers financed the Russian Revolution. — Kenneth Goff

Mr. Sambridge possessed a remarkably good mouthful of natural teeth for someone his age, whether ritually maintained or expensively corrected I could not tell.

As someone who has spent hours of agony strapped down in Dr. Frankenstein's chamber of dental horrors in Farrington Street, I could only respect - and hate - anyone who still possessed such a spotless set of choppers. — Alan Bradley

My reign is not yet over ... you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives; but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive. — Mary Shelley

When I was a kid, I used to sneak down the stairs when my folks were listening to 'The Witch's Tale' and 'Inner Sanctum' on the radio. I went to see 'Frankenstein' in the movie theater and got the pants scared off of me. — Al Feldstein

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 do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed. — Mary Shelley

When I was a kid, before there were VCRt, my parents had a movie projector, and we'd watch Frankenstein and Dracula. I just always though that stuff was cool - creepy comics and monsters and horrific stuff. Music lends itself to that whole theme. — Chris Reifert

If we are willing to concede the President dictatorial authority where we happen to agree with him, as liberals have tended to do over the years, we will have little chance of tying his hands when we do not ... You will see why many of us in the Congress understand how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his creation ran amok. — George McGovern

'Son of Frankenstein' is never talked about in the same tone as James Whale's 1931 'Frankenstein.' But it should be. It was Boris Karloff's last appearance in the Frankenstein series and stars Donnie Dunagan, then a child actor. — Mark Gatiss

Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat
was, literally, talked into life. — Michael Chabon

I think our grandparents were Victor Frankenstein. I basically am the kind of deeply unnatural creature that Mrs Shelley instinctively dreaded. I not only eat her sacred cows but I eat them with ketchup. While I take her point, I think that transgressive monstrosity and tampering with the life force are both a lot more fun than she suspected. — Bruce Sterling

You're a Frankenstein!"
"Don't confuse the monster with the creator. — Stephen King

In Frankenstein there is a transfer first of life into death (in the creation and animation of the monster), and then of death into life, as the monster takes his revenge on the father who gave him life but withheld recognition. — Laura Mullen

Global war has become Frankenstein's monster, threatening to destroy both sides. — Douglas MacArthur

Frankenstein is actually an equivalent of how a gay person feels growing up. — Edward Field

Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. — Mary Shelley

'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations. — Virginia Postrel

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. — Mary Shelley

I hadn't seen 'Bride of Frankenstein' until high school or maybe even later than that. It's really one of the great movie experiences where you think you know what it's going to be, but it's so much weirder and so much better than anything you could've imagined. It's so full of these striking, powerful images. — Mike Mignola

The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality. — Mary Shelley

I began to pick apart our knowledge of Frankenstein and discovered that the public's idea of this myth comes from a million different places ... I became committed to recontextualizing it all so it all worked in one story. — Max Landis

This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case. — Mary Shelley

Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Very few. But millions want to see me as Frankenstein so that's the one I do. — Peter Cushing

I am malicious because I am miserable — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

So many people of my generation all grew up with that shock theater package on television of 'Frankenstein,' 'Wolfman,' 'Dracula,' 'Mummy,' all the Universal stuff. — Rick Baker

Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real. — Peter Murphy

I am a cultural Frankenstein — Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

Villains used to always die in the end. Even the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula - you'd kill them with a stake. Now the nightmare guy comes back. — Benicio Del Toro

I thank you, Walton," he said, "for your kind intentions towards to miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh affections think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives."
Victor Frankenstein; Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

Frankenstein was quite a man. He was out of favor, he wasn't human. - Edgar Major — David Greenberger

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. — P.J. Parker

The Frankenstein myth confronts Homo Sapiens with the fact that the last days are fast approaching. Unless some nuclear or ecological catastrophe intervenes, so goes the story, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo Sapiens by completely different beings who posses not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. This is something most Sapiens find extremely disconcerting. We like to believe that in the future people just like us will travel from planet to planet in fast spaceships. We don't like to contemplate the possibility that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms whose abilities dwarf our own. — Yuval Noah Harari

'Frankenstein' was all about the idea that, through electricity and the destruction of night, man creating light and darkness, we took on god-like powers and then abused them like gods, and we are only men. That's a story about man making a man in his own image. The inversion of natural order. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Even today, a decade later, I still can't unsee Tommy's outfit: nighttime sunglasses, a dark blazer as loose and baggy as rain gear, sand-colored cargo pants with pockets filled to capacity (was he smuggling potatoes?), a white tank top, clunky Frankenstein combat boots, and two belts. Yes, two belts. The first belt was at home in its loops; the second draped down in back to cup Tommy's backside, which was, he always claimed, the point: "It keeps my ass up. Plus it feels good. — Greg Sestero

Bosnia's war had its visual hallmarks. Parks that were turned into cemeteries, refugee families piled onto horse-drawn carts, stop-or-die checkpoints with mines across the road. The most hideous hallmark of all was the blackened patch of ground in the center of town. It always meant the same thing, a destroyed mosque. The goal of ethnic cleansing was not simply to get rid of Muslims; it was to destroy all traces that they had ever lived in Bosnia. The goal was to kill history. If you want to do that, then you must rip out history's heart, which in the case of Bosnia's Muslim community meant the destruction of its mosques. Once that was done, you could reinvent the past in whatever distorted form you wanted, like Frankenstein.

p. 85 — Peter Maass

Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. — Mary Shelley

The criers of the Mysteries speak again, bidding all men welcome to the House of Light. The great institution of materiality has failed. The false civilization built by man has turned, and like the monster of Frankenstein, is destroying its creator. Religion wanders aimlessly in the maze of theological speculation. Science batters itself impotently against the barriers of the unknown. Only transcendental philosophy knows the path. Only the illumined reason can carry the understanding part of man upward to the light. Only philosophy can teach man to be born well, to live well, to die well, and in perfect measure be born again. Into this band of the elect
those who have chosen the life of knowledge, of virtue, and of utility
the philosophers of the ages invite YOU. — Manly P. Hall

The stuff of nightmares is not only relegated to unconscious thoughts upon a pillow, safely beneath an eiderdown. — P.J. Parker

When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels.
After some questioning, you find out that God's favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in his mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively at the night sky. — David Eagleman

One of the things in the Mary Shelley [Frankenstein] is that the creature tells his story, so this begins with the creature's point of view. So, it literally starts with the creature opening his eyes and is born - but is obviously in his 30s. But because they're the creator and the created we thought it would be really interesting if they could look at each other every other night and play each other's roles. — Danny Boyle

They don't find peace. It's pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don't deserve to walk among the living, and you know it. — Lisa Unger

I come from a long line of body snatchers, probably the top-notch body snatchers in America. No make that the world. Some people might think it's gross digging up bones or corpses, but who asked them? It's no big deal, but then I've been doing it since I got out of diapers. — Minda Webber

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. — Mary Shelley

Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies. Alphonse Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever. — Mary Shelley

The 1910 Edison film of 'Frankenstein' was itself a dead thing revived by technology. — Kage Baker

But I'd have to say Young Frankenstein, which I can watch forever. — Jason Schwartzman

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster. — Howard Hodgkin

BABY, I'LL BE YOUR FRANKENSTEIN! — Gerard Way

Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe. — Mary Shelley

When I was a kid, I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein,' 'The Creeping Unknown,' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet,' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies, generally. — John Carpenter

The good thing about being Dr. Frankenstein is that you can always make new friends. — Aaron Allston

Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your hope might not be answered? — Dean Koontz

There are perennial stories like 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Sherlock Holmes' and those sorts of things, which have been around since almost as long as film, and 'Frankenstein' is another one. They're perennial favorites, which get remade every 20 years, and that's OK. — Peter Jackson

'Robopocalypse' joins a proud tradition of techno-apocalyptic tales, stretching from high-flying Icarus, to Frankenstein's monster, and to many a giant radioactive creature who has crashed the streets of Tokyo. And then, of course, there's the Terminator. — Daniel H. Wilson

This week in school they made us read Frankenstein. It was cool. I liked it. I like books that make me think. That's why I'm in the advanced class. My favorite part is when the monster looks at Dr. Frankenstein and tells him it's his fault. It kinda reminds me of now. You called me a monster. I walked way. Then you threatened the monster. And so if it comes down to you or me, I have to pick me. — J.J. McAvoy

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. -
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. — Mary Shelley

Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

He swings the knocker against the door. The entire building booms like a drum. It continues booming after he lets go, banging like a clock striking the hour, rattling like a great tin drum. — Christopher Bram

The reality is that these food chemists create "Frankenstein foods" within these huge, robotic, assembly-line factories. Here they dump all kinds of man-made preservatives, additives, and chemicals into the recipes for our favorite meals and snacks - in just the right amounts - so these "fake foods" can sit on grocery store shelves for months, years, and even decades without going bad. — Josh Bezoni