Quotes By Jean Cocteau

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

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

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

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

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

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.

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

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

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.

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.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

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

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.