Jean Cocteau Quotes

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious... Poetry is a religion without hope.

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

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?

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

He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.

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.

Tu dis que tu aimes les fleurs et tu leur coupes la queue, tu dis que tu aimes les chiens et tu leur mets une laisse, tu dis que tu aimes les oiseaux et tu les mets en cage, tu dis que tu m’aimes alors moi j’ai peur.

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.

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.