I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty.
JEAN GENETI recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty.
JEAN GENETViolence is a calm that disturbs you.
JEAN GENETOne can hear all that’s going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what’s going on in this house.
JEAN GENETIt’s the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.
JEAN GENETThe main object of a revolution is the liberation of man… not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
JEAN GENETErotic 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 GENETSlowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.
JEAN GENETWorse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.
JEAN GENETPerhaps 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 GENETIf 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 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 GENETWhat we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.
JEAN GENETAnyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
JEAN GENETThere are mornings when all men experience with fatigue a flush of tenderness that makes them horny.
JEAN GENETThere is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.
JEAN GENETThe pimp has a grin, never a smile.
JEAN GENET