Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bound of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out; and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion…
[…]
I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling.
Mary Shelley on how she got the idea for Frankenstein, echoing other famous creators’ first-hand accounts of inspiration and affirming the notion that “the conjuring up of the idea is not a deliberate, voluntary act.”
