Jean Genet Quotes

They spent their time doing nothing… they let intimacy fuse them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

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.

Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.

Love makes use of the worst traps. The least noble. The rarest. It exploits coincidence.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.