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
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.
I have never felt any connection with my family. There is—I must say simply—something in me that is not in my family. That was not visible in my father or mother. I do not know its origin.
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?
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.
We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.
My only politics have been friendship.