Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963)
French poet, novelist, painter, and filmmaker.
What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.
After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?
People would say to Al Brown: "You are not a boxer. You are a dancer." He laughed at this, and won.
Hasten slowly. Run faster than beauty.
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.
Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.
Don’t for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.
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, they finish by loading honors on your head.