on Genet's plight-as-orphan

Certainly [Genet] was born of a woman, but this physical origin was not retained in the collective memory. He came into the world from an unknown womb, almost as an article produced by a modern factory bears no trace of the human producer. Belonging originally to an administrative apparatus, his later affinities tended to be for institutions -- the reformatory and the prison.

- R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper, Reason & Violence: A Decade of Sartre’s Philosophy, 1950 - 1960, pg 68.