Jean Cocteau Quotes

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Poetry is a machine that manufactures love. Its other virtues escape me.

Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

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

Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

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

Classifiable things reek of death. You must strike out in other spheres . . . quit the ranks. That's the sign of masterpieces and heroes. An original, that's the person to astonish and to rule.

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;

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

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.