216 quotes
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
Dirty Hands (1948)
Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.
The Flies (1943)
For Genet, reflective states of mind are the rule. And although they are of an unstable nature in everyone, in him...reflection is always contrary to the reflected feeling.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
It is freedom, it is particularity, it is solitude that we are aiming at, and not Evil for its own sake
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Marxism, as the formal framework of all contemporary philosophical thought, cannot be superseded.
Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.
Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957)
Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.
No Exit (1944)
Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.
The Flies (1943)
To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.
The Flies (1943)
Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
But since he has decided to have the impossibility of living, every misfortune is an opportunity which lays this importance of living before his eyes and obliges him to decide, once again, to die.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal.... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space.
Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.
The Flies (1943)
A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.
You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.
No Exit (1944)
Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.
The Flies (1943)
I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)