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.”

Journal du voleur, 1949

“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.”

Journal du voleur, 1949

“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.”

Journal du voleur, 1949

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

Journal du voleur, 1949

“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.”

Journal du voleur, 1949

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

Journal du voleur, 1949

“« 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. »”

Pompes funèbres, 1947

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

The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews

“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.”

Jean Genet: Citations en anglais

“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.”

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

Source: The Thief's Journal

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

Jean Genet livre Our Lady of the Flowers

Source: Our Lady of the Flowers

“Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

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

Source: Prisoner of Love

“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 livre Our Lady of the Flowers

Source: Our Lady of the Flowers

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

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

Source: The Thief's Journal

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

Jean Genet livre Querelle of Brest

Source: Querelle of Brest

Jean Genet livre Our Lady of the Flowers

Source: Our Lady of the Flowers

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

Source: The Thief's Journal

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

Source: The Thief's Journal

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”

Source: Miracle of the Rose

“I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.”

Jean Genet livre Querelle of Brest

Source: Querelle of Brest

“The pimp has a grin, never a smile.”

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

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

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

Source: Miracle of the Rose

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

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

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

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

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

Edmund White's preface to Prisoner of Love

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

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

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

“This violence is a calm that disturbs you.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

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

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

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

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

The Thief's Journal (1949)

“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.”

Jean Genet livre Journal du voleur

In reference to the French Gestapo
The Thief's Journal (1949)