Jean Cocteau Quotes

The joy of youth is to disobey, but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.

Life is a horizontal fall.

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love

Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.

Don’t for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.

At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.

I grant you that, if you'll admit, as I do, that we are pawns of an unknown force that lives within us that dictates our actions and compels us to speak this language.

Il n'y a pas d'amour, il n'y a que des preuves d'amour.

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.

Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex.

Si le feu brûlait ma maison, qu’emporterais-je? J’aimerais emporter le feu...

Croyez-vous qu'on ne puisse prendre le mal d'amour en touchant l'or et la pourpre? Les privilèges dont vous parlez ne sont-ils pas la substance même de Jocaste et si étroitement enchevêtrés à ses organes qu'on ne puisse les désunir. De toute éternité nous appartenions l'un à l'autre. Son ventre cache les plis et replis d'un manteau de pourpre beaucoup plus royal que celui qu'elle agrafe sur ses épaules. Je l'aime, je l'adore, Tirésias, auprès d'elle il me semble que j'occupe enfin ma vraie place;

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.