215: excerpted

from The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet

pg. 17: 'But where does he get that spit,' I would ask myself, 'where does he bring it up from? Mine will never have the unctuousness or color of his. It will merely be spun glassware, transparent and fragile.'

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pg. 53: In the silence, I heard the mysterious rustling of the sheet of yellow newspaper that replaced the missing windowpane....

'It's a newspaper printed in Spanish,' I said to myself again. 'It's only natural that I don't understand the sound it's making.'

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pg. 56: 'That he charms monkeys, men and women,' I said to myself, 'is comprehensible, but what can be the nature of the magnetism, born of his glib muscles and his curls, of that blond amber, that can enthral [sic] objects?'

However, there was no doubt that objects were obedient to him.

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pg. 158: I shall be stuck in love, the way one is stuck in ice, or mud, or fear.

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pg. 267: This book does not aim to be a work of art, an object detached from an author and from the world, pursuing in the sky its lonely flight. I could have told of my past life in another tone, in other words. I have made it sound heroic because I have within me what is needed to do so, lyricism.