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
Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go to far.
Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.
Tact consists in knowing how far to go too far
The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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.
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 perform-ance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Vistor Hugo.
When a work of art appears to be in advance of its period, it is really the period that has lagged behind the work of art
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier's wrist.
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot, which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie