Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963)
French poet, novelist, painter, and filmmaker.
Be helpful, even if it compromises you.
Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.
That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist.
What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
Art is science made clear.
The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.
Respect movements, flee schools.
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.
Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas .
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.
Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
I met a young man of nineteen or twenty, who at that time vibrated with all the youth of the world. This was Jean Cocteau, then a passionately imaginative youth to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundations of the Heavenly City.
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.