Quotes by Jean Genet

“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.”

“To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone.”

“I want to fulfill myself in one of the rarest of destinies. I have only a dim notion of what itwill be. I want it to have not a graceful curve slightly bent toward evening but a hitherto unseen bea...”

“It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.”

“You must now go home, where everything -- you can be quite sure -- will be falser than here....You must go now. You'll leave by the right, through the alley....”

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

“We are the ink that gives the white page a meaning.”

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”

“The pimp has a grin, never a smile.”

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

“Betrayal is beautiful.”

“By dint of saying that I'm not alive, I accept the fact that people cease to regard me.”

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

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

“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.”

“on him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.”

“It was the first time I saw the look on the face of the people I robbed: it was ugly. I was the cause of such ugliness, and the only thing that made me feel was a cruel pleasure which, I thought, w...”

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

“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.”

“It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.”