Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Jean Cocteau Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: France
  • Born: Jul 5, 1889
  • Died: Oct 11, 1963

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette and Raymond Radiguet.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

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

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

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

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?