The world is cruel, the world is wicked   It's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city   I am your only friend   I who keep you, teach you, feed you, dress you      I who look upon you without fear   How can I protect you, boy, unless you   Always stay in here, away in here   Remember what I've taught you, Quasimodo      You are deformed, I am deformed   And you are ugly, and I am ugly   And these are crimes for which the world shows little pity   You do not comprehend, you are my one defender      Out there they'll revile you as a monster   I am a monster out there they will hate   And scorn and jeer, only a monster   Why invite their calumny and consternation?   Stay in here      Be faithful to me, I'm faithful   Grateful to me, I'm grateful   Do as I say, obey   And stay in here      Safe behind these windows and these parapets of stone   Gazing at the people down below me   All my life I watch them as I hide up here alone   Hungry for the histories they'd shown me      All my life I memorize their faces   Knowing them as they will never know me   All my life I wonder how it feels to pass a day   Not above them but part of them      And out there living in the sun   Give me one day out there   All I ask is one to hold forever   Out there where they all live unaware   What I'd give, what I'd dare   Just to live one day out there      Out there among the millers and the weavers and their wives   Through the roofs and gables I can see them   Every day they shout and scold and go about their lives   Heedless of the gift it is to be them   If I was in their skin, I'd treasure every instant      Out there strolling by the Seine   Taste a morning out there like ordinary men   Who freely walk about there just one day and then   I swear I'll be content with my share   Won't resent, won't despair, old and bent I won't care   I'll have spent one day out there