Jean Cocteau Quotes

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Be yourself. The world worships the original.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.

Living is a horizontal fall.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.

May the devil himself splatter you with dung.

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

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.

The joy of the young is to disobey

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.

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.

The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.

There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.

The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

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.

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.