Jean Cocteau Quotes & Sayings

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

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance. — Jean Cocteau

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

A picture is not a window ... an abstract refers to no reality but its own. — Jean Cocteau

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for. — Jean Cocteau

Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself. — Jean Cocteau

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

Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship. — Jean Cocteau

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. — Jean Cocteau

When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality. — Jean Cocteau

In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness. — Jean Cocteau

I expect a black silence that is almost as violent as laughter. — Jean Cocteau

Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself. — Jean Cocteau

Without resistance you can do nothing. — Jean Cocteau

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

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. — Jean Cocteau

My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them. — Jean Cocteau

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

I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted. — Jean Cocteau

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. — Jean Cocteau

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

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

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. — Jean Cocteau

Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble. — Jean Cocteau

Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it. — Jean Cocteau

The map of our life is folded in such a way that we cannot see one main road across it, but as it is opened out, we are constantly seeing new side roads. We think we are choosing, and we have no choice. — Jean Cocteau

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

Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion. — Jean Cocteau

What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model. With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies. — Jean Cocteau

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious. — Jean Cocteau

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

Art is science made clear. — Jean Cocteau

My hair has always grown in all directions and my teeth too and my beard. My nerves and my soul must surely grow in the same way. That is what makes me incomprehensible to those who grow all in one direction and are incapable of imagining a hay-stack. It is this that baffles those who could rid me of this legendary leprosy. They do not know how to take me.
This organic disorder is a safeguard for me because it keeps the thoughtless at distance. I also get certain advantages from it. It gives me diversity, contrast, a quickness in leaning to one side or the other as this or that object invites me, and in regaining my balance. — Jean Cocteau

Life is a horizontal fall. — Jean Cocteau

The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight. That is why a poet, the revolutionary of the soul, limits himself to the about-turns of the mind. — Jean Cocteau

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

Perhaps I know to what extent I can go too far. — Jean Cocteau

What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things. — Jean Cocteau

Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it's a miracle that we don't dissolve in our baths. — Jean Cocteau

Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself. — Jean Cocteau

He who is affected by an insult is infected by it. — Jean Cocteau

The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand ... We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us. — Jean Cocteau

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

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

It is in this way that a war is disastrous. If it does not kill, it transmits to some an energy alien to their own resources; to others it permits what the law forbids and accustoms them to short cuts. It artificially glorifies ingenuity, pity, daring. A whole younger generation believes itself to be sublime and collapses when it has to draw on itself for patriotism and fate. — Jean Cocteau

I am burning myself up and will always do so. — Jean Cocteau

I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes. — Jean Cocteau

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist. — Jean Cocteau

The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition. — Jean Cocteau

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them. — Jean Cocteau

I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road. — Jean Cocteau

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

We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame. — Jean Cocteau

Last night I suffered so much that there was nothing but my pain to distract me from my pain. I had to make it my sole diversion and with good reason. It had thus decreed. It attacked at every point. Then it distributed its troops. It encamped. It so manoeuvred that it was no longer intolerable at any one of its positions, but tolerable at them all. That is to say that the intolerable being distributed, it was this no longer, except as a whole. It was something both tolerable and intolerable. The organ that breaks down and the final chord that goes on for ever. — Jean Cocteau

The knack is art. — Jean Cocteau

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

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

Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous. — Jean Cocteau

What is style? Saying complicated things in a simple way. — Jean Cocteau

The artist must know how far to go too far. — Jean Cocteau

I am a lie that always speaks the truth. — Jean Cocteau

One sits down first; one thinks afterwards. — Jean Cocteau

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. — Jean Cocteau

I am a lie who always speaks the truth. — Jean Cocteau

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images. — Jean Cocteau

Living is a horizontal fall. — Jean Cocteau

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world. — Jean Cocteau

I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition. — Jean Cocteau

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

Art is science made flesh. — Jean Cocteau

Jacques' life was like the rooms of Montmartre women that are never cleaned because they get up at four o'clock and slip a coat over their nightgown to go downstairs and eat. — Jean Cocteau

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

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth. — Jean Cocteau

It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously. — Jean Cocteau

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you. — Jean Cocteau

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

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

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility. — Jean Cocteau

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. — Jean Cocteau

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 perform-ance of a trained dog on very shaky ground. — Jean Cocteau

[W]e have a tendency to judge others according to ourselves. — Jean Cocteau

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart?
It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn. — Jean Cocteau

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. — Jean Cocteau

Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence ... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play. — Jean Cocteau

I grant you that, if you'll admit, as I do, that we are pawns of an unknown force that lives within us that dictates our actions and compels us to speak this language. — Jean Cocteau

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. — Jean Cocteau

A film is a petrified fountain of thought. — Jean Cocteau

The obstinate miner
of the void
exploits
his fertile mine — Jean Cocteau

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

Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection. — Jean Cocteau

And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept. — Jean Cocteau

Writing is an act of love. If it is not it is only handwriting. It consists in obeying the driving force of plants and trees and in broadcasting sperm far around us.
The richness of the world is in its wastefulness. — Jean Cocteau

The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far. — Jean Cocteau

One must not mistake majority for truth. — Jean Cocteau

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

Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body. — Jean Cocteau

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world. — Jean Cocteau

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect. — Jean Cocteau

Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. — Jean Cocteau

In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake. — Jean Cocteau