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When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death.

Jean Genet

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

Cruelty Limitation World
Creation is not a light-hearted game. The creator commits to a terrible adventure, which is to take up-on himself all of the dangers that his creatures run.
JEAN GENET

Commitment Creation Creature Game Heart Light Run
Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.
JEAN GENET

Discover Memories Music Myself New Silence
The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man… not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
JEAN GENET

Application Ideology Liberty Man Object Revolution
The despondency that follows makes me feel somewhat like a shipwrecked man who spies a sail, sees himself saved, and suddenly remembers that the lens of his spyglass has a flaw, a blurred spot — the sail he has seen.
JEAN GENET

Feeling Flaw Follow Himself Man Remember Save
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

Black Branch Country Hate Man Myself Plant
To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
JEAN GENET

Achievement Bad Happiness Harmony Taste
I don’t want to disappear.
JEAN GENET

Disappear Lost Myself
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

Dawn Language Morning Name Play Reveal Voice Whisper
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
JEAN GENET

Betrayal Experience Happiness
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

Greatness Imagination Man Universe Wild
Beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.
JEAN GENET

Beautiful Monster Ornament Projection Purity Ugly
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

Hand Heart Myself Trap
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

Agreement Breathe Crime Hope Virtue World
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.
JEAN GENET

Dreams Realize Regret Worst Young Yourself Youth
The time for reasoning is past; now’s the time to get steamed up and fight like mad.
JEAN GENET

Fight Inspirational Mad Past Reason Time

When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death.

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When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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