Jean Cocteau Quotes

Paris, however―because of her purely fortuitous beauty, because of the old things which have become a part of her, because of her entanglement of buildings and tenements―Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.

At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.

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

One sits down first one thinks afterwards.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion on the other hand produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

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

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.

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

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

Art is science made clear.

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

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

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

plantitIt will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivitiesFor the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations

Certainly I believe in luck. How else do you explain the success of those you don't like?

Be yourself. The world worships the original.

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

To be moved confuses the soul. One cannot convey these kinds of memories any more than the events of a dream......if I have complained too long, it is because my memory, no longer having any fixed abode, has to carry its luggage with it.

A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

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

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones.

Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

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

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.

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.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!