Jean Genet quotes

Jean Genet was a French novelist, playwright, and poet, acclaimed for his provocative works exploring themes of crime, marginalization, and identity. His literature challenged social norms and championed the voices of outcasts. He became an influential figure in both literary and political circles. Here are 45 of his quotes:

This violence is a calm that disturbs you. (Jean Genet)
Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all. View quote
Jean Genet
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. View quote
Jean Genet
To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance. View quote
Jean Genet
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all. View quote
Jean Genet
But I would adore that thief who is my mother. View quote
Jean Genet
Betrayal is beautiful. View quote
Jean Genet
I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. View quote
Jean Genet
... beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments. View quote
Jean Genet
It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go. View quote
Jean Genet
The pimp has a grin, never a smile. (Jean Genet)
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. View quote
Jean Genet
Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears! View quote
Jean Genet
The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology. View quote
Jean Genet
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle. View quote
Jean Genet
The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side. View quote
Jean Genet
I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face. View quote
Jean Genet
But--criminals are remote from you--as in love, they turn away and turn me away from the world and its laws. Thiers smells of sweat, sperm, and blood. In short, to my body and my thristy soul it offers devotion. It was because their world contains these erotic conditions that I was bent on evil. View quote
Jean Genet
If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him! View quote
Jean Genet
Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. I wondered at its perfect coherence, which rejected me. View quote
Jean Genet
By remaining inaccessible, he became the epitome of those whom I have named and who stagger me. I was therefore chaste. (Jean Genet)
With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable. View quote
Jean Genet
So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility. View quote
Jean Genet
Yet, what is their violence compared to mine, which was to accept theirs, to make it mine, to wish it for myself, to intercept it, to utilize it, to force it upon myself, to know it, to premeditate it, to discern and assume its perils? But what was mine, willed and necessary for my defense, my toughness, my rigor, compared to the violence they underwent like a malediction, risen from an inner fire simultaneously with an outer light which sets them ablaze and illuminates us? View quote
Jean Genet
Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life. View quote
Jean Genet