Jean Genet

Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.

We are the ink that gives the white page a meaning.

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....

It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.

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.

I want to fulfill myself in one of the rarest of destinies. I have only a dim notion of what it __ill be. I want it to have not a graceful curve slightly bent toward evening but a hitherto unseen beauty __ovely 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 __asings 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.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

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.

on him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.

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.

By dint of saying that I'm not alive, I accept the fact that people cease to regard me.

Betrayal is beautiful.

The pimp has a grin, never a smile.

Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.