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Solitude, As I Understand It, Does Not Signify An Unhappy State, But Rather Secret Royalty, Profound Incommunicability Yet A More Or Less Obscure Knowledge Of An Invulnerable Singularity.

-Jean Genet

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Solitude, As I Understand

Jean Genet

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Solitude, As I Understand It, Does Not Signify An Unhappy State, But Rather Secret Royalty, Profound Incommunicability Yet A More Or Less Obscure Knowledge Of An Invulnerable Singularity.

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I Don't Want To Disappear.

Limited By The World, Which I Oppose, Jagged By It, I Shall Be All The More Handsome And Sparkling As The Angles Which Wound Me And Give Me Shape Are More Acute And The Jagging More Cruel.

Creation Is Not A Light-hearted Game. The Creator Commits To A Terrible Adventure, Which Is To Take Up-on Himself All Of The Dangers That His Creatures Run.

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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.

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Men Endowed With A Wild Imagination Should Have, In Addition, The Great Poetic Faculty Of Denying Our Universe And Its Values So That They May Act Upon It With Sovereign Ease.

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The Most Reasonable Man Always Manages, When He Pulls The Trigger, To Become A Dispenser Of Justice.

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.

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.

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When We See Life, We Call It Beautiful. When We See Death, We Call It Ugly. But It Is More Beautiful Still To See Oneself Living At Great Speed, Right Up To The Moment Of Death.

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I Leave You Free To Imagine Any Dialogue You Please. Choose Whatever May Charm You. Have It, If You Like, That They Hear The Voice Of The Blood, Or That They Fall In Love At First Sight... Conceive The Wildest Improbabilities. Have It That The Depths Of Their Beings Are Thrilled At Accosting Each Other In Slang. Tangle Them Suddenly In A Swift Embrace Or A Brotherly Kiss. Do Whatever You Like.

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