The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
JEAN COCTEAUArt produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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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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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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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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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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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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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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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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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.
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You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
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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 speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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