Jean Genet

“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.”

“The hour between dog and wolf, that is, dusk, when the two can’t be distinguished from each other, suggests a lot of other things besides the time of day…The hour in which…every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself. The hour of metamorphoses, when people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf. The hour that comes down to us from at least as far back as the early Middle Ages, when country people believed that transformation might happen at any moment.”

“But I shall transmit their names far down the ages. These names alone will remain in the future, divested of their objects. Who, it will be asked, were Bulkaen, Harcamone, Divers, who was Pilorge, who was Guy? And their names will inspire awe, as we are awed by the light from a star that has been dead a thousand years. Have I told all there was to tell of this adventure? If I take leave of this book, I take leave of what can be related. The rest is ineffable. I say no more and walk barefoot.”

“He did not joke, as the newspapers dared report, for sarcasm is bitter and conceals ferments of despair.”

“The door made the usual, terrifying sound of a door.”

“I was in the habit of calling a kiss a peck. Bulkaen had said “a smack.” As erotic language, such as we use in dalliance, is a kind of secretion, a concentrated juice that flows from the lips only in moments of the most intense emotion, of plaint, as this language is, in other words, the essential expression of passion, each pair of lovers has its own peculiar language, a language which has a perfume, an odor sui generis which belongs only to that couple… intimacy… the secret rites of a deep love.”

“When I wrote to him, I wanted my letters to be sprightly, trivial, indifferent. In spite of myself, I imbued them with my love. I would have liked to make it seem powerful, sure of itself and sure of me, but I infused it, despite myself, with all my anxiety.”

“A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded.”

“Certain acts dazzle us and light up blurred surfaces, if our eyes are sharp enough to see them in a flash, for the beauty of a living thing can be grasped only fleetingly. To pursue it during its changes leads us inevitably to the moment when it ceases, for it cannot last a lifetime. And to analyze it, that is, to pursue it in time with the sight and the imagination, is to view it in its decline, for following the marvelous moment in which it reveals itself, it diminishes in intensity.”

“Divine was metamorphosed into one of those monsters that are painted on walls, for a customer murmured a magic word: 'homoseckshual”

“Slowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.”

“Those eyes, seemingly without mystery, are like certain closed cities, such as Lyons and Zurich, and they hypnotize me as do empty theaters, deserted prisons, machinery at rest, deserts, for deserts are closed and do not communicate with the infinite.”

“If I have viewed them from a certain angle, it is because, seen from there, that is how they looked--which may be due to prismatic distortion, but which is therefore what they also are, though unaware of being it.”

“Anyone who has not experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.”

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

“The severe and at times almost condemning glance - a glance that seems to pass judgment - with which the homosexual appraises every good-looking young man he may encounter, is in reality a quick but intense meditation on his own loneliness”

“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.”

“If he lies pressed against me, he gently twines his legs about mine and our legs are merged by the very soft cloth of our pajamas; he then takes great pains to find the right spot to cuddle his cheek. So long as he is not sleeping, I feel the quivering of his eyelids and upturned lashes against the very sensitive skin of my neck. If he feels a tickling in his nostrils, his laziness and drowsiness keep him from lifting his hand, so that in order to scratch himself he rubs his nose against my beard, thus giving me delicate little taps with his head, like a young calf sucking its mother.”

“Dünya, yıkımımı istiyorsa, başarıma dikkat eder.Bir yanlışlığı pahalı öderim, ama bunu zamanında yakalarsam, bana öyle geliyor ki, cennette bile göbek atılacaktır.”

“Güçlü olmakla kendımın tanrısı da olurum.Kendimi benimsetirim.Güzellik sözcüğü erkekler için kullanıldığında bana bir yüzün ve kimi zaman erkeksi zarifliği de eklediğim bir bedenin uyumlu niteliğini belirtir.O zaman güzellik hayran olunacak, baskın,egemen hareketlere eşlik eder.Çok özel ahlaksal tutumların bu hareketleri ortaya çıkardığını düşünürüz ve böyle erdemlerin içimizdeki kültürü sayesinde, erkek sevgililerimizde doğal olarak bulunan bu gücü zavallı yüzlerimize, hasta bedenlerimize verebileceğimizi umarız.Yazık!Onların aslında hiç de sahip olmadıkları bu erdemler bizim zayıflığımızdır.”

“Dzięki temu,że powiedział mi,iż nie żyję,pogodziłem się z faktem,że ludzie wyrzucili mnie ze swoich myśli”

“Świętość to smutek”

“Nasze życie rodzinne,prawo naszych domów,nie przypomina ani trochę waszych domów.Kochamy się,ale jest to miłość bez miłości”

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

“[Y]ou're in a fog. When you circle round, you watch us live. You watch us struggle and you're envious.”

“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.”

“The Archangel took his role of fucker seriously. It made him sing the Marseillaise, for now he was proud of being a Frenchman and a Gallic cock, of which only males are proud. Then he died in the war.”

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

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

“Betrayal is beautiful.”

“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.”

“Neither the state guards nor the municipal police stopped me. What they saw going by was no longer a man but the curious product of misfortune, something to which laws could not be applied. I had exceeded the bounds of indecency.”

“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.”

“It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.”

“The pimp has a grin, never a smile.”

“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.”

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.”

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.”

“...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.”

“Thereafter, he ennobled shame. He bore it in my presence like a burden, like a tiger clinging to his shoulders, the threat of which imparted to his shoulders a most insolent submissiveness.”

“Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears!”

“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.”

“لا شك أن جاذبية مفرطة تحيل النساء الحسنوات، الرقيقات مثلا، عصيات على الاحتمال، والرجال، إذ يقفون على مبعدة منهن،يتلقون منهن بين الفينة والأخرى بعض البوارق، ويتحملون هذه الجاذبية زمنا أطول، ولكن عملهن بمرأى منا – قيامهن بشحذ مفاتنهن الإغرائية- يحولنا الى خادمة موليير تلك، التي يروى أن الشاعر كان يجرب عليها الرقية الخبيثة لملهاواته الجديدة. كانت تعرف أم اللقايا ستكون رائعة لأنها موجهة الى جمهور غائب سيكون تحت الأنوار، مبهرجا بالمباذل والبرانس، في حين تظل هي خادمة تحمل صدريات لإزالة مكياج المعلم. كان يلزمه استحمام وتهيئة.”

“When the name was in the room, it came to pass that the murderer, abashed, opened up, and there sprang forth, like a Glory, from his pitiable fragments, an altar on which there lay, in the roses, a woman of light and flesh.The alter undulated on a foul mud into which it sank: the murderer.”

“Even there, intimacy evolved its alchemy. A solemn marble stairway led to corridors covered with red carpets, upon which one moved noiselessly.”

“They made comments about the women's legs, but, as they were not witty, their remarks had no finesse. Since their emotion was not torn by any point, they quite naturally skidded along on a stagnent ground of poetry.”

“They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them.”

“I leave you free to imagine any dialogue you please. Choose whatever may charm you. Have it, if you like, that they hear the voice of the blood, or that they fall in love at first sight... Conceive the wildest improbabilities. Have it that the depths of their beings are thrilled at accosting each other in slang. Tangle them suddenly in a swift embrace or a brotherly kiss. Do whatever you like.”

“The despondency that follows makes me feel somewhat like a shipwrecked man who spies a sail, sees himself saved, and suddenly remembers that the lens of his spyglass has a flaw, a blurred spot -- the sail he has seen.”