It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
JEAN COCTEAUAfter the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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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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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Art is science in the flesh.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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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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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the 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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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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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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