216 quotes
...the impossible must be supposed in order to explain the superdetermination of the event
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.
Nausea (1938)
...for one cannot enter an image unless one makes oneself imaginary
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
...the prisoner's dreams is the guard's spirituality
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
The past is the luxury of proprietors.
Nausea (1938)
We were too light, Electra. Now our feet press down in the earth like the wheels of a cart in its groove. Come with me, and we will walk heavily, bending under the weight of our heavy load.
The Flies (1943)
Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.
The Flies (1943)
such mad confidence within despair.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
It is for the sake of order that I seduced Clytemnestra, for the sake of order that I killed my king. I wanted for order to rule and that it rule through me. I have lived without desire, without love, without hope: I made order. Oh! terrible and divine passion!
The Flies (1943)
I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.
Nausea (1938)
Monsieur ... I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.
Nausea (1938)
In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.
Preface to The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
The strangest mores of the most of-the-way societies will, in spite of everything, be relatively comprehensible to the person who has a flesh-and-blood knowledge of man's needs, anxieties, and hopes. If, on the other hand, this experience is lacking, he will not even be able to understand the customs of those about him.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
That is precisely what we should have expected, since Genet wants to live simultaneously creation, destruction, the impossibility of destroying and the impossibility of creating, since he wants both to show his rejection of the divine creation and to manifest, in the absolute, human impotence as man's reproval of God and as the testimony of his grandeur.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
First, what do we mean by anguish? The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows-When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind-in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
Jupiter: I gave you the liberty to serve me.
Orestes: That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.
The Flies (1943)
To whomever gives a kiss or a blow
Render a kiss or blow
But to whomever gives when you are unable to return
Offer all the hatred in your heart
For you were slaves and he enslaves you
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.
Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)
What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.
Dirty Hands (1948)