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
Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it's a miracle that we don't dissolve in our baths.
A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
Vivre est une chute horizontale. Life is a horizontal fall.
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.
Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.
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.
Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.