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First Of All, Don't Mix Your Hairpins Up With Mine! You .... Oh! All Right, Mix Your Muck With Mine. Mix It! Mix Your Rags With My Tatters! Mix It All Up.

-Jean Genet

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First Of All, Don't

Jean Genet

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First Of All, Don't Mix Your Hairpins Up With Mine! You .... Oh! All Right, Mix Your Muck With Mine. Mix It! Mix Your Rags With My Tatters! Mix It All Up.

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Every Premeditated Murder Is Always Governed By A Preparatory Ceremonial And Is Always Followed By A Propitiatory Ceremonial. The Meaning Of Both Eludes The Murderers Mind.

By Stretching Language We'll Distort It Sufficiently To Wrap Ourselves In It And Hide.

I Recognize In Thieves, Traitors And Murderers, In The Ruthless And The Cunning, A Deep Beauty - A Sunken Beauty.

If We Behave Like Those On The Other Side, Then We Are The Other Side. Instead Of Changing The World, All We'll Achieve Is A Reflection Of The One We Want To Destroy.

There Are Mornings When All Men Experience With Fatigue A Flush Of Tenderness That Makes Them Horny.

It's A True Image, Born Of A False Spectacle.

I Wanted To Swallow Myself By Opening My Mouth Very Wide And Turning It Over My Head So That It Would Take In My Whole Body, And Then The Universe, Until All That Would Remain Of Me Would Be A Ball Of Eaten Thing Which Little By Little Would Be Annihilated: That Is How I See The End Of The World.

They Remain Dead, The People I Try To Resuscitate By Straining To Hear What They Say. But The Illusion Is Not Pointless, Or Not Quite, Even If The Reader Knows All This Better Than I Do. One Thing A Book Tries To Do, Beneath The Disguise Of Words And Causes And Clothes And Grief, Is Show The Skeleton And The Skeleton Dust To Come. The Author Too, Like Those Of Whom He Speaks, Is Dead.

A Great Wind Swept Over The Ghetto, Carrying Away Shame, Invisibility And Four Centuries Of Humiliation. But When The Wind Dropped People Saw It Had Been Only A Little Breeze, Friendly, Almost Gentle.

Prisons! Prisons! Prisons, Dungeons, Blessed Places Where Evil Is Impossible Since They Are The Crossroads Of All The Malediction In The World. One Cannot Commit Evil In Evil.

What I Did Not Yet Know So Intensely Was The Hatred Of The White American For The Black, A Hatred So Deep That I Wonder If Every White Man In This Country, When He Plants A Tree, Doesn't See Negroes Hanging From Its Branches.

The 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.

It's The Hour When Night Breaks Away From The Day, My Dove, Let Me Go.

The Despondency That Follows Makes Me Feel Somewhat Like A Shipwrecked Man Who Spies A Sail, Sees Himself Saved, And Suddenly Remembers That The Lens Of His Spyglass Has A Flaw, A Blurred Spot -- The Sail He Has Seen.

The Vaporish Cocaine Loosens The Contours Of Their Lives And Sets Their Bodies Adrift, And So They Are Untouchable.

A Man Must Dream A Long Time In Order To Act With Grandeur, And Dreaming Is Nursed In Darkness.

Would Hamlet Have Felt The Delicious Fascination Of Suicide If He Hadn't Had An Audience, And Lines To Speak?

...beauty Is The Projection Of Ugliness And By Developing Certain Monstrosities We Obtain The Purest Ornaments.

I'm Homosexual. How And Why Are Idle Questions. It's A Little Like Wanting To Know Why My Eyes Are Green.

Poetry Is The Break (or Rather The Meeting At The Breaking Point) Between The Visible And The Invisible.

Slowly But Surly I Want To Strip Her Of Every Kind Of Happiness As To Make A Saint Of Her.

There Is A Close Relationship Between Flowers And Convicts.

Power May Be At The End Of A Gun, But Sometimes It's Also At The End Of The Shadow Or The Image Of A Gun.

Repudiating The Virtues Of Your World, Criminals Hopelessly Agree To Organize A Forbidden Universe. They Agree To Live In It. The Air There Is Nauseating. They Can Breathe It.

When I Beheld You, Suddenly - For Perhaps A Second - I Had The Strength To Reject Everything That Wasn't You And To Laugh At The Illusion. But My Shoulders Are Very Frail. I Was Unable To Bear The Weight Of The World's Condemnation. And I Began To Hate You When Everything About You Would Have Kindled My Love And When Love Would Have Made Men's Contempt Unbearable, And Their Contempt Would Have Made My Love Unbearable. The Fact Is, I Hate You.

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I Decided To Be What Crime Made Of Me.

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The Pimp Has A Grin, Never A Smile.

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Erotic Play Discloses A Nameless World Which Is Revealed By The Nocturnal Language Of Lovers. Such Language Is Not Written Down. It Is Whispered Into The Ear At Night In A Hoarse Voice. At Dawn It Is Forgotten.

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I Give The Name Violence To A Boldness Lying Idle And Enamored Of Danger.

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First Of All, Don't Mix Your Hairpins Up With Mine! You .... Oh! All Right, Mix Your Muck With Mine. Mix It! Mix Your Rags With My Tatters! Mix It All Up.

She Was Happy, And Perfectly In Line With The Tradition Of Those Women They Used To Call "ruined," "fallen," Feckless, Bitches In Heat, Ravished Dolls, Sweet Sluts, Instant Princesses, Hot Numbers, Great Lays, Succulent Morsels, Everybody's Darlings . . .

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