I expected this reception. All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious - painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour - but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?

My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.

All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.

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

I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?