Success Quote by Jean Cocteau

Art, for Cocteau, isn’t a ladder; it’s a drug. The line turns the usual creative mythology inside out. Fame and success are the public currencies we pretend to chase, but Cocteau points to a private payoff: intoxication, that altered state where the self feels temporarily sharpened, absolved, enlarged. It’s a bracing claim from a director who lived inside avant-garde circles where scandal, experimentation, and the cult of the artist weren’t side effects but atmosphere.

The bite comes in the second clause. “That is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up” is not just elitist sneer; it’s a diagnosis of compulsion. Cocteau implies that making art can feel so good that it becomes self-justifying, immune to feedback, indifferent to results. The work doesn’t have to be good to deliver the high of creation: the late-night flow, the rush of being the kind of person who makes things, the fantasy of significance. In that sense, “bad” isn’t only about talent; it’s about an addiction to process and identity.

Subtextually, he’s needling two audiences at once: the careerists who treat art as a branding exercise, and the romantics who sanctify the struggle. Cocteau offers a colder, clearer motive: artists persist because the act itself seduces them. The line also smuggles in a warning. If intoxication is the reward, then sobriety - craft, critique, revision, the willingness to stop - becomes the rare discipline that separates serious artists from people merely chasing the buzz.