“I have the worst kind of history—a non history. I wasn’t born poor, oppressed, rich, famous, or any other such extreme. I was born in the middle, and I desperately want to hide it.”

“I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.”

“Love is patient and love is kind. Damn! Why’d it have to be the two qualities I wasn’t born with?”

“I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.”

“You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace.”

“Plus, I happened to be a history nerd. Why else would I be interested in a guy born in the year 519?”