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
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.
Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.
It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
One must not mistake majority for truth.
To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
Good music resembles something. It resembles the composer.
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.