Querelle of Brest Quotes

“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...”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears!”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow received may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. 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. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjection. From it, they draw their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them.”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“Humility can only be born out of humiliation”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“And he was apprehensive that some light, emanating from within his body, or from his true consciousness, might not be illuminating him, might not, in some way from inside the scaly carapace, give off a reflection of that true form and make him visible to men, who would then have to hunt him down.”
― Jean Genet, Querelle

“The severe and at times almost condemning glance - a glance that seems to pass judgment - with which the homosexual appraises every good-looking young man he may encounter, is in reality a quick but intense meditation on his own loneliness”
― Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest

“From dawn on the sea was constructing its own architecture of hulks, masts and rigging, under the still sleep-blurred eyes of the men chained together in pairs.”
― Jean Genet, Querelle