All Jean Cocteau Quotes
In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.
Jean Cocteau
48% of people like this quote
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau
48% of people like this quote
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.
Jean Cocteau
47% of people like this quote
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
Jean Cocteau
47% of people like this quote
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
Jean Cocteau
47% of people like this quote
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
Jean Cocteau
46% of people like this quote
Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.
Jean Cocteau
46% of people like this quote
The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
Jean Cocteau
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Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau
46% of people like this quote
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
Jean Cocteau
44% of people like this quote
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Jean Cocteau
40% of people like this quote
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