Elizabeth Harlander quotes from Frankenstein (2025)

Honor, country, valor...these surely are worthwhile, elevated ideas by themselves, wouldn't you agree? And yet men are dying for them, in a decidedly un-elevated way. Face-down in the mud, choking on blood, screaming in pain. Men that were fathers, or brothers, or sons to someone out there. Men that were fed, and cleaned, and nursed, and schooled into this world by their mothers, only to fall on a battlefield far from those that provoke these tragedies. Those men remain at home, untouched by blood or bayonet. Their skin unpierced, their blankets warm and clean. That is what happens when ideas are pursued by fools.

My place was never in this world. I sought and longed for something I could not quite name. But in you, I found it. To be lost and to be found, that is the lifespan of love. And in its brevity, its tragedy... this has been made eternal. Better this way... to fade... with your eyes gazing upon me.

You should not go near it.

"It?"

It. Yes. I believe there is life in it. But not the spark of intelligence as I intended.

Perhaps not as you understand it...

Something went wrong. A blockage, a suture, a connection...

You, the great Victor Frankenstein, made a mistake?

The Creature knows but one word, and one word alone. "Victor. Victor, Victor, Victor!" It just parrots it, without rhyme or reason.

Perhaps for the time being, that word means everything to him. What if, in being anew, the spirit that animates him is simpler, purer, purer than that of the common man?

::scoffs:: Purer?

What if, unrestrained by sin, our Creator's breath came into his flesh directly?

Good God, Elizabeth! If I could force myself to believe it, it would be my inclination to see attraction in you for that thing!

Understanding! In those eyes I saw pain, and what is pain if not evidence of intelligence?

What about my pain? What about what you have denied me? What my heart wants?

Your heart? Of all the human anatomy, that is the organ furthest from your understanding. Only monsters play God, Baron.