Jean Cocteau

“I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love”

“The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.”

“« Un beau livre, c'est celui qui sème à foison les points d'interrogation. »”

“Le cinéma, c'est l'écriture moderne dont l'encre est la lumière.”

“« Ce qui caractérise notre époque, c’est la crainte d’avoir l’air bête en décernant une louange, et la certitude d’avoir l’air intelligent en décernant un blâme. »”

“I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you don't like?”

“The obstinate miner of the void exploits his fertile mine”

“plant it It will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivities For the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations”

“There is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.”

“A little too much is just enough for me.”

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.”

“Čudo, ako potraje, prestaje da bude čudo.Zato priviđenja tako brzo i nestaju.”

“Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.”

“По едно време, в началото, аз те ревнувах и от съня ти. Питах се: къде ли отива, когато спи? Какво вижда? А ти се усмихваше, протягаше се, затова аз започнах да мразя хората, които сънуваш. Често те будех, за да ги пропъдиш. Но ти обичаше да сънуваш и се разяряваше, че те събуждам. Не можех да понасям невъзмутимата ти физиономия.”

“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”

“La mode, c'est ce qui se démode.”

“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”

“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.”

“Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.”

“Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.”

“Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!”

“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.”

“Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.”

“Gute Erziehung besteht darin, dass man verbirgt, wieviel man von sich selber hält und wie wenig von den anderen.”

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

“J'exige un vrai bonheur, un vrai amour, une vraie contrée où le soleil alterne avec la lune, où les saisons se déroulent en ordre, où de vrais arbres portent de vrais fruits, où de vrais poissons habitent les rivières, et de vrais oiseaux le ciel, où la vrai neige découvre de vraies fleurs, où tout sort est vrai, vrai, véritable. J’en ai assez de cette lumière morne, de ces campagnes stériles, sans jour, sans nuit, où ne survivent que les bêtes féroces et rapaces, où les lois de la nature ne fonctionnent pas.”

“The knack is art.”

“À force de ne jamais réfléchir, on a un bonheur stupide.”

“May the devil himself splatter you with dung.”

“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”

“There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.”

“Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.”

“I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.”

“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.”

“I am a lie that always speaks the truth.”

“The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”

“When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.”

“True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.”

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”

“A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.”

“Les miroirs feraient bien de réfléchir un peu plus avant de renvoyer les images.”

“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses. ”

“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. ”

“I am burning myself up and will always do so.”

“Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body.”

“one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started”

“We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.”

“No se debe confundir la verdad con la opinión de la mayoría.”

“If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.”

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.”