My parents disapproved of friendships between the sexes. But our sensuality, which is born with us, though for a time it remains dormant, was aroused rather than quelled by their disapproval.
I have never been a dreamer. What appears dream to others more credulous than I seems to me to be as real as cheese to a cat—in spite of the glass that covers it. Yet the glass does exist.
If the glass breaks, the cat takes advantage, even if it’s his master who breaks it and cuts his hand in the process.’
—from the opening of The Devil in the Flesh (Le Diable au corps)
1923; translated from the French by Richard Griffiths
