Jean Genet Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Jean Genet

  Night, Play, Voice

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  19 Copy quote

• Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease.

  Jean Genet

  Men, Should Have, Wild Imagination

  Jean Genet (1987). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.176, Grove Press

  9 Copy quote

• Violence is a calm that disturbs you.

  Jean Genet

  Violence, Calm, Quiet

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  9 Copy quote

• There are mornings when all men experience with fatigue a flush of tenderness that makes them horny.

  Jean Genet

  Morning, Men, Horny

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  18 Copy quote

• Anyone who's never experienced the pleasure of betrayal doesn't know what pleasure is.

  Jean Genet

  Betrayal, Pleasure, Knows

  9 Copy quote

• What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.

  Jean Genet

  Hate, Ideas, Hatred

  10 Copy quote

• Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.

  Jean Genet

  Gun, Power, Shadow

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  8 Copy quote

• Love makes use of the worst traps. The least noble. The rarest. It exploits coincidence.

  Jean Genet

  Love, Noble, Use

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.44, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

• Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears!

  Jean Genet

  Blood, Tears, Body

  Jean Genet (1994). “Querelle”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  16 Copy quote

• It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.

  Jean Genet

  Night, Hours, Dove

  Jean Genet (1994). “The Balcony”, p.33, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  22 Copy quote

• What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn't see Negroes hanging from its branches.

  Jean Genet

  Country, Men, White

  12 Copy quote

• I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.

  Jean Genet

  Would Be, Balls, World

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  23 Copy quote

• ...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.

  Jean Genet

  Ornaments, Monstrosity, Certain

  Jean Genet (1994). “Miracle of the Rose”, p.13, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.

  Jean Genet

  Stars, Flower, Order

  Jean Genet (1973). “The Thief's Journal”

  9 Copy quote

• In reviewing my life, in tracing its course, I fill my cell with the pleasure of being what for want of a trifle I failed to be, recapturing, so that I may hurl myself into them as into dark pits, those moments when I strayed through the trap-ridden compartments of a subterranean sky

  Jean Genet

  Dark, Cells, Sky

  Jean Genet (1987). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.70, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

• They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them.

  Jean Genet

  Doing Nothing, Intimacy, Fuse

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.59, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  10 Copy quote

• I leave you free to imagine any dialogue you please. Choose whatever may charm you. Have it, if you like, that they hear the voice of the blood, or that they fall in love at first sight... Conceive the wildest improbabilities. Have it that the depths of their beings are thrilled at accosting each other in slang. Tangle them suddenly in a swift embrace or a brotherly kiss. Do whatever you like.

  Jean Genet

  Falling In Love, Kissing, Sight

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.59, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  11 Copy quote

• There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.

  Jean Genet

  Flower, Fragility, Delicacy

  "A Thief’s Journal". Book by Jean Genet, 1949.

  13 Copy quote

• When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.

  Jean Genet

  Men, Opposites, Names

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  8 Copy quote

• In order to weep, I had descended to the realm of the dead themselves, to their secret chambers, led by the invisible but soft hands of birds down stairways which were folded up again as I advanced. I displayed my grief in the friendly fields of death, far from men: within myself.

  Jean Genet

  Grief, Men, Hands

  Jean Genet, Bernard Frechtman (1994). “Funeral Rites”, p.46, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

• When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you.

  Jean Genet

  Hate, Men, Laughing

  Jean Genet (1994). “The Blacks: A Clown Show”, p.12, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating. They can breathe it.

  Jean Genet

  Air, Evil, Criminals

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  11 Copy quote

• Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.

  Jean Genet

  Real, Men, People

  Jean Genet, Roger Blin (1969). “Letters to Roger Blin: reflections on the theater”

  7 Copy quote

• Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?

  Jean Genet

  Suicide, Suicidal, Fascination

  Jean Genet (2003). “Prisoner of Love”, New York Review of Books

  13 Copy quote

• The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.

  Jean Genet

  Success, Congratulations, Hero

  Jean Genet (2003). “Prisoner of Love”, New York Review of Books

  7 Copy quote

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