I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger. Jean Genet More Quotes by Jean Genet More Quotes From Jean Genet 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. Jean Genet stars flower order Creation is not a light-hearted game. The creator commits to a terrible adventure, which is to take up-on himself all of the dangers that his creatures run. Jean Genet light running adventure By stretching language we'll distort it sufficiently to wrap ourselves in it and hide. Jean Genet stretching wraps language Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease. Jean Genet wild-imagination should-have men 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 voice play night Poetry is the break (or rather the meeting at the breaking point) between the visible and the invisible. Jean Genet point-break poetry art The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology. Jean Genet rebellious revolution men They remain dead, the people I try to resuscitate by straining to hear what they say. But the illusion is not pointless, or not quite, even if the reader knows all this better than I do. One thing a book tries to do, beneath the disguise of words and causes and clothes and grief, is show the skeleton and the skeleton dust to come. The author too, like those of whom he speaks, is dead. Jean Genet dust grief book Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak? Jean Genet suicidal fascination suicide 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. Jean Genet fragility jail flower Violence is a calm that disturbs you. Jean Genet calm violence quiet 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 dungeons blessed evil What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born. Jean Genet hate hatred ideas 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. Jean Genet shadow gun power I don't want to disappear. Jean Genet disappear want Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man. Jean Genet real men people They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them. Jean Genet fuse doing-nothing intimacy on him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body. Jean Genet body mouths song Slowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her. Jean Genet saint kind want There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. Jean Genet delicacy fragility flower