Jean Cocteau Quotes

160 quotes in 1692 categories

• All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
• I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
• Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
• 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.
• Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
• An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
• 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,…
• 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.
• A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
• We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
• Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
• Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
• The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
• Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
• The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
• I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
• A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
• Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Browse Jean Cocteau Quotes by Category