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
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.
What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.
Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.
Tact consists in knowing how far to go too far
Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go to far.
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Vistor Hugo.
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
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?