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Jean Cocteau [1889-1963] French

Rank: 101
Director, Writer

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus.

Art, Poetry, Death, Best, Chance, Design, Friendship, God, Life, Marriage, Movies, Music, Pet, Sad, Success, Truth, Wisdom, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.	Art	101
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?	Chance, Success	102
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.	Poetry, Truth	103
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.	Art	104
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.	Best, Friendship, God	105
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.		106
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.		107
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.	Art	108
Life is a horizontal fall.	Life	109
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.		110
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.		111
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.		112
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.	Design	113
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.	Art, Work	114
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.	Art, Marriage	115
You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.	Death	116
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.		117
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.		118
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.		119
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.		120
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.	Art	121
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.	Death	122
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.		123
Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.		124
If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.		125
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.	Death	126
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.		201
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?		202
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.	Music	203
The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.		204
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.		205
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.	Pet	206
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.		207
The poet doesn't invent. He listens.	Poetry	208
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.	Poetry	209
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.		210
The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.	Wisdom	211
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.	Movies	212
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.		213
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.		214
I am a lie who always speaks the truth.		215
The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.		216
Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.		217
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.		218
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.		219
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.		220
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.		221
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.	Poetry	222
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.		223
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.		224
In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.		225
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.		226
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.		301
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.	Sad	302
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.		303
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.		304
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.		305

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