Jean Genet Quotes

A collection of quotes by Jean Genet.

Jean Genet (1910-1986) was a French novelist, playwright, and poet. Born into a troubled childhood, he spent much of his early life in and out of correctional institutions, which greatly influenced his later works. Genet's writing often explored themes of homosexuality, criminality, and social marginalization. His notable works include "Our Lady of the Flowers," "The Balcony," and "The Maids." Genet's provocative and subversive writing style made him a controversial figure in the literary world, and he is regarded as one of the most influential French writers of the 20th century.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthl

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur,

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

The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word monger

The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination.

When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, a

When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.

Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly

Repudiating 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.

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man...

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the w

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.

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?

Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was

Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.

Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at

Power 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.

We know that their adventures are childish. They themselves

We know that their adventures are childish. They themselves are fools. They are ready to kill or be killed over a card-game in which an opponent -- or they themselves -- was cheating. Yet, thanks to such fellows, tragedies are possible.

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.

There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.

There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something

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.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be

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

A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, inv

A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze, friendly, almost gentle.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conque

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real hist

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.