“The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover.”
For the endlessly curious.
This line comes on
Tee$32
About this line
It’s Victor Frankenstein describing his boyhood — the pure hunger to know what the world is made of. Shelley plants the whole tragedy right here: the same curiosity that opens the world is the one that undoes him.
Why we carry this line
I know that hunger, that curiosity to understand. I suspect you do too. And that’s why we’re both drawn to this quote.
The design
“secret,” is cut out of a solid bar of warm matte gold. It looks like a line someone redacted, but you can still read it.
There’s no ink in the letters. The shirt itself shows through.
Then “discover.” stands in the open. The secret is the setup. The discovery is the point.
What happened next
Frankenstein came out in 1818 with no name on it. Percy Shelley sent a copy to Sir Walter Scott for review. Scott assumed Percy had written it.
On June 14, Mary wrote to Scott herself. Politely, she let him know who the author really was.
Five years later, her story was playing on the London stage. “I found myself famous!” she wrote to a friend.
Documented source
Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →