I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
JEAN COCTEAUThe extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
-
-
Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
JEAN COCTEAU -
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
JEAN COCTEAU -
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
JEAN COCTEAU -
One 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 COCTEAU -
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
JEAN COCTEAU -
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
JEAN COCTEAU -
One must not mistake majority for truth.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
JEAN COCTEAU -
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
JEAN COCTEAU