Explore Quotes by Jean Cocteau

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

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

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

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

Life is a horizontal fall.

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

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.

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.

Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.

Living is a horizontal fall.

French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

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

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.

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

Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.

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.

The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.

Beauty makes one lose one's head. Poetry is born of this decapitation

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