“He struggled violently. `Let me go,′ he cried; `monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa.′
`Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.′
`Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a syndic—he is M. Frankenstein—he will punish you. You dare not keep me.‘”
“I was dependent on none and related to none. The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.”
“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
“He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.”
“It looked like an experiment gone terribly wrong - something from a nightmare. Part animal, part machine, the Griever rolled and clicked along the stone pathway. Its body resembled a gigantic slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed. It had no distinguishable head or tail, but front to end it was at least six feet long, four feet thick.”
″‘I can’t believe I missed the coolest thing anyone has ever seen,’ Seth complained...‘A giant, flying, snake-covered, three-headed, acid-breathing panther. If you didn’t have witnesses, I’d be sure you made it up just to torture me.‘”
“The real monster […], the real nightmare monster, formed of cloud and ash and dark flames, but with real muscle, real strength, real red eyes that glared back at him and flashing teeth that would eat his mother alive.”
“Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.”
″ ‘What’s the use of you if you can’t heal her?’ Conor said, pounding away. ‘Just stupid stories and getting me into trouble and everyone looking at me like I’ve got a disease.’ ”
″ ‘You know that is not true,’ the monster said. ‘You know that your truth, the one that you hide, Conor O’Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of.’ ”
“And if she was, then Grisha weren’t inherently evil. They were like anyone else—full of the potential to do great good, and also great harm. To ignore that would make Matthias the monster.”
“Rising Crete against their shore appears. There too, in living sculpture, might be seen The mad affection of the Cretan queen; Then how she cheats her bellowing lover’s eye; The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny, The lower part a beast, a man above, The monument of their polluted love.”
″‘You’re not a monster, Shallan,’ Wit whispered. ‘Oh, child. The world is monstrous at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.’
‘I am.’
‘No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.‘”
“Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions”
“If [the jury] sees it as a contest between the defense and the prosecution as to who’s lying, they’ll vote for the prosecution. The prosecutor walks around looking very important. No one is accusing her of being a bad person. They’re accusing you of being a monster. They jury can ask itself, Why should the prosecutor lie?”
“She gathers her papers and moves away as STEVE, arms still outstretched, turns toward the camera. His image is in black and white, and the grain is nearly broken. It looks like one of the pictures they use for psychological testing, or some strange beast, a monster.”
“Seeing my dad cry like that was just so terrible. What was going on between us, me being his son and him being my dad, is pushed down and something else is moving up in its place. It’s like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead.”
“And the monster is back. Every now and then he can hear it move under the bed. It sighs. It licks its paws. Sometimes it turns over. It never does anything, but it lies there.”
“There it is again. Suddenly he understands. There’s a monster under the bed, a huge, wild monster. He’s afraid to look. But he doesn’t have to. Alfie knows it’s there.”
“Finally he decides that he’ll give the little boy his yellow car. Tomorrow he’ll be nice to the little boy. Then Alfie falls asleep without paying any more attention to the monster.”