Jean Cocteau Quotes

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.

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.

Vivre est une chute horizontale

Be helpful, even if it compromises you.

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

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

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart?
It is too heavy. It will always show

It is dangerous not to conform with people's image of us, because they do not readily retract their opinions.

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.

The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.

« Ce qui caractérise notre époque, c’est la crainte d’avoir l’air bête en décernant une louange, et la certitude d’avoir l’air intelligent en décernant un blâme. »

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

The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.