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Quote by Jean Genet

Work

O Estúdio de Alberto Giacometti

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Author

Jean Genet
Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a French novelist known for his unique style and profound social criticism. His works often delve into the lives of marginalized individuals and their place in the social structure. Genet's life was filled with drama, having been a beggar and prisoner, experiences that deeply influenced his writing. more

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“Love is such a horrific word. Love is such a magnificent word. Love is something that is lost to me. Love I don’t believe exists for me. I search for it everywhere I go. I search for it in faces unknown. I search for in all that I do. Love is what makes the light shine through. Love has eluded me once more. Love is a very tricky feeling you know. Because love makes me lose my mind in the brokenness of life.”

“There was one of the people of that time too, who had opened her soul to the spirit with the eyes of ice. He sat by one of them, keeping watch at the source of action, smiling scornfully at evil and good, fathoming everything, judging nothing, investigating, searching, picking apart, paralysing the movements of the heart and the force of thought by smiling scornfully without return. The lovely Marianne carried the spirit of self-observation within her. She felt his eyes of ice and scornful smile follow every step, every word. Her life had turned into a play, where he was the only spectator. She was no longer a person: she did not suffer, she did not rejoice, she did not love, she performed the role of the lovely Marianne Sinclaire, and self-observation sat with staring eyes of ice and diligent, disassembling fingers and watched her perform. She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and scornful, one half of herself sat and watched how the other half acted, and never did the peculiar spirit that picked apart her being have a word of feeling or sympathy.”

“You see, the world is not enough satisfying for a writer. The world doesn’t fit the writer; the world’s design is for him like a straitjacket. The writer is a human, at least physically he looks like all other humans, but he is unsatisfied, gaunt and silent. He creates a world of his own, one to reflect all of him. He is getting rid of this world as a serpent gets rid of his skin. Between the covers of the book he plays God and molds humans of paper. And he is punishing them or creating them wings, as he considers. Some he kills with bare hands, not because they were bad people, but because they did bad things, and he leaves others to die by themselves. And then the writer realizes that revenge doesn’t exist, and that death is not a penalty, or if it is, is the same for everybody. Did God feel that way in the beginning of everything? Did the creation, the world, the water, the muse, the island, the sunrise, the stones came out of discontent? Out of an unbearable loneliness?”