Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAUArt is science in the flesh.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
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After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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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.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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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.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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