Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 8

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

Respect movements, flee schools.

I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

A picture is not a window...an abstract refers to no reality but its own.

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.

The cinema is death at work.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.

Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.

You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.

Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.

Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.

Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.

The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.

one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started

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, the finish by loading honors on your head.

My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.

We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.

Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body.

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

Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.

And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.

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.