Jean Genet Quotes

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

If we don't know life, how can we know death?

If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?

You've gotta know what death is to know life!

Life and death. They are somehow sweetly and beautifully mixed, but I don't know how.

I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.

Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.

I'm interested in time, fame, death, beauty, truth, all those things.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

My perspective on life is now to try to play music that reflects that life and death are part of the same coin. And to know about life, we must really examine the function - like death. Life tells you a lot about what death is, not what people say it is.

some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

Why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful?

One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.

There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.

If we were doomed to live forever, we would scarcely be aware of the beauty around us.

The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave

Life is but a dream for the dead.

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?

I am convinced that only when a man is prepared to die is he also prepared to live.

And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea. But for now we are young; let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see.

Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

However ugly a face may be, we can discover some beauty in it if we first experience wonder before it and then begin to understand it, too.

Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.