A biography for Jean Cocteauhasn’t been written yet.
“When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.”
“If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.”
“Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”
“You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.”
“The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.”
“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”
“Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.”
“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”
“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!”
“The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.”
“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”
“There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.”
“Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.”
“Paris, however―because of her purely fortuitous beauty, because of the old things which have become a part of her, because of her entanglement of buildings and tenements―Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.”
“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”
“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.”
“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?”
“I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.”
“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”
“It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.”