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
When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.
A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.