19 Quotes & Sayings By Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a French playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and one of the major figures of postwar European theatre. Genet was co-founder of the Theatre de la Jeune Parole (Theatre of the Young Word) in 1943 together with Louis Jouvet and Jean Noël Belloy. The group staged their first production in 1944. His best-known works include The Screens (Le Mur), Our Lady of the Flowers (Le Théâtre de Jean Genet), Un Cri (A Cry), and The Balcony (Le balcon).

To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone.
1
To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone. Jean Genet
A man must dream a long time in order to...
2
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. Jean Genet
3
I want to fulfill myself in one of the rarest of destinies. I have only a dim notion of what it 
will be. I want it to have not a graceful curve slightly bent toward evening but a hitherto unseen beauty 
lovely because of the danger which works away at it overwhelms it undermines it. Oh let me be only utter
 beauty I shall go quickly or slowly but I shall dare what must be dared. I shall destroy appearances the 
casings will burn away and one evening I shall appear there in the palm of your hand quiet and pure like a
 glass statuette. You will see me. Round about me there will be nothing left. . Jean Genet
4
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. Jean Genet
5
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle. Jean Genet
6
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.... Jean Genet
7
We are the ink that gives the white page a meaning. Jean Genet
8
Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues. Jean Genet
9
Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist. Jean Genet
10
The pimp has a grin, never a smile. Jean Genet
11
Betrayal is beautiful. Jean Genet
12
By dint of saying that I'm not alive, I accept the fact that people cease to regard me. Jean Genet
13
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
14
On him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body. Jean Genet
15
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, was bound to transfigure my own face, to make me resplendent. I was then 23 years old. From that moment on, I felt capable of advancing in cruelty. Jean Genet
16
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all. Jean Genet
17
I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. Jean Genet
18
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