The pimp has a grin, never a smile.
JEAN GENETThe pimp has a grin, never a smile.
JEAN GENETWhen 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 GENETThe fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
JEAN GENETSlowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.
JEAN GENETThe time for reasoning is past; now’s the time to get steamed up and fight like mad.
JEAN GENETEvery premeditated murder is always governed by a preparatory ceremonial and is always followed by a propitiatory ceremonial. The meaning of both eludes the murderers mind.
JEAN GENETThe main object of a revolution is the liberation of man… not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
JEAN GENETI give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.
JEAN GENETI recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty.
JEAN GENETPower may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it’s also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.
JEAN GENETPoetry is the break (or rather the meeting at the breaking point) between the visible and the invisible.
JEAN GENETRepudiating 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 GENETBeauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.
JEAN GENETBeauty 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.
JEAN GENETThere is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.
JEAN GENETIt’s a true image, born of a false spectacle.
JEAN GENET