Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 3

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love

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

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

I am burning myself up and will always do so.

The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.

I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.

Without resistance you can do nothing

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

Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

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

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.

When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.

It is not inspiration; it is expiration.

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

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.