Jean Cocteau

Director

1889-07-05

Quotes by Jean Cocteau

• I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones.

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• Paris, however―because of her purely fortuitous beauty, because of the old things which have become a part of her, because of her entanglement of buildings and tenements―Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.

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• Art is science made clear.

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• Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

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• 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.

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• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

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• Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

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• A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: Paul's dying; Paul's going to die' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

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

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

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• Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

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• Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: Paul's dying; Paul's going to die' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

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

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• Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

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• Paris, however―because of her purely fortuitous beauty, because of the old things which have become a part of her, because of her entanglement of buildings and tenements―Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.

  Read quote

• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

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• Art is science made clear.

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

  Read quote