“Everything in the world had already been discovered. I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.”

“...so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn't become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.”

“I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.”

“Sometimes he felt as if he'd been born in the wrong century. The people of this time were all wrong for him, and he was all wrong for them. But he refused to become something he wasn't just for society's approval.”

“More than anything in this world, I wish I had been born rich. It would have made up for everything. I'd still be ugly, sure, but I'd be rich and ugly. I'd still be weak and dim and tongue-tied with women, but I'd be rich enough for them not to care. I'd no longer be a social misfit, I'd be eccentric. And most of all, I'd no longer be what I was, I'd be something different.”

“But I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.”