“ I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. Jean Genet
“ Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all. Jean Genet
“ 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
“ A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. Jean Genet
“ Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man. Jean Genet
“ 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
“ 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… Jean Genet
“ On him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body. Jean Genet
“ 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
“ 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
“ 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
“ 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
“ 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 beaut… Jean Genet
