Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteauwas 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 Beastand 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, Albert Gleizes, Igor Stravinsky, Marie Laurencin, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette, Jean Genet,...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 July 1889
CityMaisons-Laffitte, France
CountryFrance
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
The cinema is death at work.
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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.
The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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.
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.