If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
JEAN COCTEAUEverything 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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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.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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