It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go. Jean Genet More Quotes by Jean Genet More Quotes From Jean Genet Anyone who's never experienced the pleasure of betrayal doesn't know what pleasure is. Jean Genet betrayal pleasure knows 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. Jean Genet criminals evil air I decided to be what crime made of me. Jean Genet decided crime made In order to weep, I had descended to the realm of the dead themselves, to their secret chambers, led by the invisible but soft hands of birds down stairways which were folded up again as I advanced. I displayed my grief in the friendly fields of death, far from men: within myself. Jean Genet grief men hands 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. Jean Genet existentialism ugly beautiful ...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone. Jean Genet variation character book Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity. Jean Genet strange share facts 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. Jean Genet ghetto wind people It's a true image, born of a false spectacle. Jean Genet born I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me. Jean Genet made people ideas The vaporish cocaine loosens the contours of their lives and sets their bodies adrift, and so they are untouchable. Jean Genet adrift cocaine body Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues. Jean Genet evil may men The most reasonable man always manages, when he pulls the trigger, to become a dispenser of justice. Jean Genet triggers justice men She was happy, and perfectly in line with the tradition of those women they used to call "ruined," "fallen," feckless, bitches in heat, ravished dolls, sweet sluts, instant princesses, hot numbers, great lays, succulent morsels, everybody's darlings . . . Jean Genet princess numbers sweet When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you. Jean Genet hate laughing men 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 congratulations hero success 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. Jean Genet names opposites men 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 white men country First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up. Jean Genet rags mines firsts In reviewing my life, in tracing its course, I fill my cell with the pleasure of being what for want of a trifle I failed to be, recapturing, so that I may hurl myself into them as into dark pits, those moments when I strayed through the trap-ridden compartments of a subterranean sky Jean Genet cells dark sky
