Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
JEAN COCTEAUEverything 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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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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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to 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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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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Living is a horizontal fall.
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