Jane Peters’s Reviews > I Who Have Never Known Men > Status Update

“Perhaps nobody will ever come, perhaps one day, an astounded human being, arriving at the foot of the stairs as I did so long ago, will see the dark wood-panelled room, the neatly arranged bed, and an old woman sitting upright, a knife in her heart, looking peaceful.
It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.”

184: “Sometimes the women pitied me, saying that at least they'd known real life, and I was very jealous of them, but they died, as 1 am about to die, and what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?”

“I suppose I am an old woman, but I still love looking at my face. I don't know if it's beautiful or ugly, but it is the only human face I ever see. I smile at it and receive a friendly smile back.”

“You've never seen a child, you don't know what it means—their vulnerability, their trust, the love you feel for them, the anxiety, being ready to lay down your life to save them, and it's unbearable to imagine a child's pain.'
It's true I know nothing of all that... Perhaps that's why I'm so different from the others. I must be lacking in certain experiences that make a person fully human.”

“I was surprised at how much they had to say, the passion with which they repeated the same thing in ten different ways so as to avoid accepting that they'd had absolutely nothing to say to one another for ages. But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I've realised these past few years.”

“I only recently started taking an interest in the prefaces…They often seem to feel the need to emphasise that they wrote the book not out of vanity, but because someone asked them to, and that they had thought about it long and hard before accepting. How strange! It suggests that people were not avid to learn, and that you had to apologise for wanting to convey your knowledge.”