Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAUAfter 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
-
-
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAU -
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU -
There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
JEAN COCTEAU -
A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
JEAN COCTEAU -
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
JEAN COCTEAU -
It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
JEAN COCTEAU