Jean Cocteau Quotes

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.

The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

The artist must know how far to go too far.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.

I am burning myself up and will always do so.

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.

Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.

I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.

The poet Paul Éluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.

The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.

Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.

Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

My only politics have been friendship.

The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.

Without resistance you can do nothing

There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

May the devil himself splatter you with dung.

Nothing is more intriguing than a still photograph in the middle of a motion picture... Just as an accident is a cry changed into silence and not a silence after a cry, photography is speed rendered motionless.