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Jean Cocteau Quotes


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

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

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

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

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

Life is a horizontal fall.

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.

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

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

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.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

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

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

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

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.

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

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