Jean Cocteau Quotes

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

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.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

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.

The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.

It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

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.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.

Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.

Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

One must not mistake majority for truth.

The only way to kill death is through photography.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

My only politics have been friendship.

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.

A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

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.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.

Art is science in the flesh.

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.

Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

There are poets and there are grownups.

The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.

The cinema is death at work.

The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.