After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
JEAN COCTEAUArt is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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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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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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The joy of the young is to disobey.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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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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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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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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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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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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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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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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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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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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