Quotes from Jean Cocteau

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show

The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight. That is why a poet, the revolutionary of the soul, limits himself to the about-turns of the mind.

We only serve as a model to the portrait of our fame

It is in this way that a war is disastrous. If it does not kill, it transmits to some an energy alien to their own resources; to others it permits what the law forbids and accustoms them to short cuts. It artificially glorifies ingenuity, pity, daring. A whole younger generation believes itself to be sublime and collapses when it has to draw on itself for patriotism and fate.

En France, on a d'abord considéré la bonté comme une forme de la bêtise, la méchanceté comme une forme de l'intelligence. Maintenant la politesse est considérée comme du temps perdu.

La mode, c'est ce qui se démode.

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

A picture neither saddening nor gladdening I fear; neither beautiful nor ugly.

The obstinate miner of the void exploits his fertile mine

Tu dis que tu aimes les fleurs et tu leur coupes la queue, tu dis que tu aimes les chiens et tu leur mets une laisse, tu dis que tu aimes les oiseaux et tu les mets en cage, tu dis que tu m'aimes alors moi j'ai peur.

Writing is an act of love. If it is not it is only handwriting. It consists in obeying the driving force of plants and trees and in broadcasting sperm far around us. The richness of the world is in its wastefulness.

Without resistance you can do nothing.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

When I think of all the books I have yet to read, I am sure that I am still happy.

Le hasard, c'est la forme que Dieu prend pour passer incognito.

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.

Poetry is a machine that manufactures love. Its other virtues escape me.

J'aime les chats parce que j'aime ma maison. Et qu'ils en deviennent peu à peu l'âme visible.

To be moved confuses the soul. One cannot convey these kinds of memories any more than the events of a dream... ...if I have complained too long, it is because my memory, no longer having any fixed abode, has to carry its luggage with it.