Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
JEAN COCTEAUNothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
JEAN COCTEAUBeauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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.
JEAN COCTEAUOne of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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.
JEAN COCTEAUChildren and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
JEAN COCTEAUThe artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
JEAN COCTEAUStyle is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAUMirrors should think longer before they reflect.
JEAN COCTEAUElegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
JEAN COCTEAUHere I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
JEAN COCTEAUFilm will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
JEAN COCTEAUAn artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAUListen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
JEAN COCTEAUFrench people are Italian people in a bad mood.
JEAN COCTEAUI know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
JEAN COCTEAU