I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty. – Jean Genet
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all. – Jean Genet
Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadnt had an audience, and lines to speak? – Jean Genet
We know that their adventures are childish. They themselves are fools. They are ready to kill or be killed over a card-game in which an opponent — or they themselves — was cheating. Yet, thanks to such fellows, tragedies are possible. – Jean Genet
People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy. – Gary Saul Morson, The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel, 2012