Jean Genet citations

“Le talent c'est la politesse à l'égard de la matière, il consiste à donner un chant à ce qui était muet.”

“L’acte de chier dans le petit matin, nulle part ailleurs ne prend la solennelle importance que seul peut lui conférer d’être réussi dans un cabinet, par les vitres dépolies de quoi l’on distingue la façade sculptée, les gardes, les statues, la cour d’honneur; […] car y chier devient un acte important qui a sa place dans la vie où le roi m’a convié. La prison m’accorde la même sécurité.”

“La trahison, le vol et l'homosexualité sont les sujets essentiels de ce livre. Un Rapport existe entre eux, sinon apparent toujours, du moins me semblerait-il reconnaître une sorte d'échange vasculaire entre mon goût pour la trahison, le vol et mes amours.”

“La Gestapo Française contenait ces deux éléments fascinants : la trahison et le vol. Qu'on y ajoutât l'homosexualité, elle serait étincelante, inattaquable.”

“L'on s'étonnera que la réunion de qualités molles obtienne les arêtes vives du cristal de roche […] J'ai dit que j'étais fasciné. Ce seul mot contient l'idée de faisceaux — et plutôt de faisceaux lumineux pareils aux feux de cristaux. Ces feux sont le résultat d'une certaine disposition des surfaces.”

“Le jardinier est la plus belle rose de son jardin.”

“« Même si d’autres couleurs ont remplacé sur le planisphère le rose symbolique de l’Empire, les Français vivent toujours leur supériorité, sauf qu’elle est un peu plus en eux-mêmes enfouie, plus au bas, probablement dans les replis des intestins. Autrefois hautaine, cette supériorité, sachant que ses jours sont comptés, devient hargneuse. Et, pour l’agacer, voici que la France est toute parcourue de Noirs, de métis, d’Arabes, qui ne baissent presque plus les yeux : leur regard est au niveau du nôtre. »”

“Je hasarde une explication : écrire c'est le dernier recours quand on a trahi.”

“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.”

“Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life.”

“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.”

“Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”

“They spent their time doing nothing… they let intimacy fuse them.”

“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.”

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

“Slowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.”

“Betrayal is beautiful.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.”

“The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side.”

“I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face.”

“But--criminals are remote from you--as in love, they turn away and turn me away from the world and its laws. Thiers smells of sweat, sperm, and blood. In short, to my body and my thristy soul it offers devotion. It was because their world contains these erotic conditions that I was bent on evil.”

“If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!”

“This violence is a calm that disturbs you.”

“Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. I wondered at its perfect coherence, which rejected me.”

“By remaining inaccessible, he became the epitome of those whom I have named and who stagger me. I was therefore chaste.”

“With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable.”

“So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility.”