After the writers death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter. – Jean Cocteau
I am a lie who always speaks the truth. – Jean Cocteau
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. – Jean Cocteau
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead. – Jean Cocteau
Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for. – Jean Cocteau
A film is a petrified fountain of thought. – Jean Cocteau
I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul. – Jean Cocteau
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it. – Jean Cocteau
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying. – Jean Cocteau
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. – Jean Cocteau
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying. – Jean Cocteau
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. – Jean Cocteau
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up. – Jean Cocteau
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood. – Jean Cocteau
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious. – Jean Cocteau
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper. – Jean Cocteau
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture. – Jean Cocteau
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. – Jean Cocteau
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. – Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. – Jean Cocteau
