Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Jean Cocteau Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: France
  • Born: Jul 5, 1889
  • Died: Oct 11, 1963

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette and Raymond Radiguet.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

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

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

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

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

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

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

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

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

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

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

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

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.