Lullabyes for little criminals

"At the waiting room of Family Services downtown, I felt as if I were in formaldehyde, one of the little fetuses in jars at the chemistry lab at our school. I'd been removed from my natural environment and brought here to be studied. If someone stuck a pin in my side, I doubt that I would have felt anything.

"Lots of times when children draw a person on a blank piece of paper, they don't draw any background at all, just a person standing there without any context. That was me...

"You had to think that you were a superhero and that the cold could not affect you. It could not even touch you. Or at least that's what I had to do. Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel.

"Is there inside of everybody the self that comes out when you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there."

-Heather O'Neill, Lullabyes for Little Criminals