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
Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body.
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.
The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
Find first, seek later.
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.
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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.