Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.
Jean GenetSlowly but surly I want to strip her of every kind of happiness as to make a saint of her.
Jean GenetThe force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination.
Jean GenetI'm homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.
Jean GenetAdded to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
Jean GenetWhen the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.
Jean Genet