Jean Cocteau Quotes

I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

I am burning myself up and will always do so.

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

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.

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

A little too much is just enough for me.

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

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

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

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.