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
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.
One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.
The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.
I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.