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
Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
It is not inspiration; it is expiration.
One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.
The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
I expect a black silence that is almost as violent as laughter.
It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
Art is science made flesh.
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.