“Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
Quotes from bookThe Thief's Journal
Jean GenetOriginal title Journal du voleur (French, 1949)
The Thief's Journal is a novel by Jean Genet. It is a part-fact, part-fiction autobiography that charts the author's progress through Europe in a depoliticized 1930s, wearing nothing but rags and enduring hunger, contempt, fatigue and vice. The main character encounters bars, dives, flophouses, robbery, prison and expulsion in Spain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Nazi Germany and Belgium.
“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
Source: The Thief's Journal
“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“This violence is a calm that disturbs you.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
In reference to the French Gestapo
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“But I would adore that thief who is my mother.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
