Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.

If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.

I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.

before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.

I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

Quite like old times,' the room says.