We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
JEAN COCTEAUWe must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
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The only way to kill death is through photography.
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Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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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.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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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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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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The joy of the young is to disobey.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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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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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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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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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.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
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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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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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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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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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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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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
JEAN COCTEAU