Facts about Jean Cocteau

Occup.	Director
From	France
Born	July 5, 1889
Died	October 11, 1963
Aged	74 years

Summary

Jean Cocteau was a famous Director from France, who lived between July 5, 1889 and October 11, 1963. He/she became 74 years old.

Zodiac:

He/she is born under the zodiac cancer, who is known for Emotion, Diplomatic, Intensity, Impulsive, Selective. Our collection contains 47 quotes who is written / told by Jean, under the main topics: Art - Music - Movie - Poetry.

Related authors: Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Elsa Schiaparelli (Designer), Jude Law (Actor)

47 Famous quotes by Jean Cocteau

"The poet doesn't invent. He listens"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

"Style is a simple way of saying complicated things"

Jean Cocteau

"I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?"

Jean Cocteau

"Life is a horizontal fall"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture"

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

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

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth"

Jean Cocteau

"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"

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

"One must be a living man and a posthumous artist"

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

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

Jean Cocteau

"Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie"

Jean Cocteau

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought"

Jean Cocteau

"The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends"

Jean Cocteau

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

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"

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"Art is not a pastime but a priesthood"

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"I am a lie who always speaks the truth"

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

"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"

Jean Cocteau