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 GENETLimited 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.
More Jean Genet Quotes
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By stretching language we’ll distort it sufficiently to wrap ourselves in it and hide.
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I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.
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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 -
Betrayal is beautiful.
JEAN GENET -
Slowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.
JEAN GENET -
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 -
There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.
JEAN GENET -
Love makes use of the worst traps. The least noble. The rarest. It exploits coincidence.
JEAN GENET -
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.
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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 -
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
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Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
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Beauty has no other origin than the singular wound, different in every case, hidden or visible, which each man bears within himself, which he preserves, and into which he withdraws when he would quit the world for a temporary but authentic solitude.
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Poetry is the break (or rather the meeting at the breaking point) between the visible and the invisible.
JEAN GENET -
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