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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

I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.
JEAN GENET

Bold Dangerous Lying Name Violence
Poetry is the break (or rather the meeting at the breaking point) between the visible and the invisible.
JEAN GENET

Break Poet Poetry Visible Writing
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

Fame Hero Pay Success
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
JEAN GENET

Betrayal Experience Happiness
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

Achievement Behavior Change Destroy Reflection
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
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.
JEAN GENET

Authentic Beauty Himself Man Quit Solitude Source Temporary Wound
One 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 GENET

Himself Home Street Talk
Prisons! Prisons! Prisons, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible since they are the crossroads of all the malediction in the world. One cannot commit evil in evil.
JEAN GENET

Blessing Evil Place Prison World
Beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.
JEAN GENET

Beautiful Monster Ornament Projection Purity Ugly
Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.
JEAN GENET

Crime Man People Shame True
By stretching language we’ll distort it sufficiently to wrap ourselves in it and hide.
JEAN GENET

Hide Language Ourselves Stretch Wrap
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
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
Every 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 GENET

Government Mindset Murder
The most reasonable man always manages, when he pulls the trigger, to become a dispenser of justice.
JEAN GENET

Justice Man Management Reason Trigger Weapon
On him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.
JEAN GENET

Body Himself Move
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
What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.
JEAN GENET

Born Hate Ideas Need
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
Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.
JEAN GENET

Appearance Handsome Men Virtue
I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.
JEAN GENET

Ideas Light Love Myself People
Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.
JEAN GENET

Fact Share Strange
I don’t want to disappear.
JEAN GENET

Disappear Lost Myself
Violence is a calm that disturbs you.
JEAN GENET

Calm Disturb Violence Yourself
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
They spent their time doing nothing… they let intimacy fuse them.
JEAN GENET

Fuse Intimacy Time

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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