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
Without resistance you can do nothing
The artist must know how far to go too far.
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.
Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
The poet Paul Éluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car.
What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.
You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
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.
My only politics have been friendship.
A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
The only way to kill death is through photography.