45 Notable Quotes By Jean Genet
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.
To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.
My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.
Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.
If we behave like those on the other side, then we are the other side. Instead of changing the world, all we'll achieve is a reflection of the one we want to destroy.
They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them.
Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.
Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears!
Betrayal is beautiful.
Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.
When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.
Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.
The pimp has a grin, never a smile.
...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.
Slowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.
It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.
The door made the usual, terrifying sound of a door.
On him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.
One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.
First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up. ...
To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone.
Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.
Anyone who has not experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
He did not joke, as the newspapers dared report, for sarcasm is bitter and conceals ferments of despair.
Would it perturb you to see things as they are? To gaze at the world tranquilly and accept responsibility for your gaze, whatever it might see?
My heart to my mother, my cock to the whores, my head to the hangman.
