Jean Cocteau

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

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

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

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

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

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

The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.

One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.

A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.

I'm not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty.