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Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles , and the films The Blood of a Poet , Les Parents Terribles , Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus . His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Albert Gleizes, Igor Stravinsky, Marie Laurencin, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette, Jean Genet, and Raymond Radiguet.

✵ 5. July 1889 – 11. October 1963
Jean Cocteau photo
Jean Cocteau: 123   quotes 23   likes

Jean Cocteau Quotes

“Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.”

Jean Cocteau

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

Fight

“Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.”

Jean Cocteau

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

“Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.”

Jean Cocteau

Dessins (1924), as quoted by Pierre Chanel in "A Thousand Flashes of Genius", Jean Cocteau and the French Scene (1984)

Drawing

“Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.”

Jean Cocteau

Les Enfants Terribles translation by Rosamond Lehmann (1929)

Wealth

“It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.”

Jean Cocteau

Opium (1929)

“Find first, seek later.”

Jean Cocteau

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

“Hate only hatred.”

Jean Cocteau

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

Hate

“Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.”

Jean Cocteau

"On Invisibility" in Diary of an Unknown (1953)

Alcohol