Helen > Helen's Quotes

“Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus

“She could have a good career. She could be secretary to some interesting man.'
'I don't want her to be secretary to some interesting man,' said Mor, 'I want her to be an interesting woman and have someone else be her secretary.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sandcastle

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing, which remark I guess shows I still don't have pure motives (oh-it's-such-fun-I-just-can't-stop-who-cares-if-it's-published-or-read) about writing. It is more fun to me, than it was when I used it solely as a love-and-admiration-getting mechanism [...]. But I still want to see it finally ritualized in print.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956–1963