“When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.”

— Jean Cocteau

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't…" by Jean Cocteau?

Jean Cocteau photo

Jean Cocteau 123

French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager … 1889–1963

Related quotes

“I like the Coen brothers. Their films are smart and disturbing.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

Terry Gilliam's flying circus (2006)
Context: I like the Coen brothers. Their films are smart and disturbing. I am very impressed by what George Clooney is doing now. He is very political. I like the fact that he did Oceans Eleven and Oceans Twelve, made all that money and then leveraged the money and his success into interesting projects. Johnny Depp has also set up a production company and is showing an interest in risky projects that will not be easy.
I am sorry that it is hard for the average person, and even for an above-average person, to see a film that is not a Hollywood production. You see those films only in the festivals. There are few people there. That is worrying. People don't think. My goal in work is to make them think. The media do the opposite.

“When I went to the Crash premiere I left before they showed the scene of me pulling over Thandie Newton in the car. It was too disturbing. It's a character up there, but I still see me.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Dennis Hamill, New York Daily News (February 25, 2006) "Worth taking the risk", The Buffalo News, p. M09.

“Dawn of the Dead is one of the most prophetic and disturbing films you’ll see, and I challenge you to find anyone who can find another film from that era which provides the same level of social commentary.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[The Skinny, Scotland, http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/features/44237-director_olly_blackburn_talks_donkey_punch, Radge Media, 10 November 2008, 23 February 2012, Director Olly Blackburn talks Donkey Punch, Michael, Gillespie]

“In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I'd never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don't even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, "Wow." And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Interviews

“There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version. It was exactly what was released two months later with the exception of a couple of reaction shots which we went back in to get. I liked the movie very much and asked him what the studio's problem was. I felt that he was at a point where they might have worn him down”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

if that's at all possible
Mohican Press interview (2005)

“The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“I maintain that the frustration is an important, almost crucial, ingredient. I think that the best painting involves frustration. The point about the late Rembrandt [paintings] is not that it's satisfying but on the contrary that it is disturbing and frustrating. Because really, what he [Rembrandt] has done is to eliminate any plane - anything between that image and you. The Van Dyck [portrait] hasn't. It says [only] I'm a painting. The Rembrandt says: I am not a painting, I am a real man. But he is not a real man either. What is it then, that you are looking at?”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), p. 97

“He Kandinsky had always expressed a great interest in abstraction when we visited Tunisia together in 1904. The Moslem interdiction of representational painting seemed to stir his imagination and that was when I first heard him say that objects disturbed him. Between 1907 and 1910 [the period in which Kandinsky painted his first abstract compositions], he began to rely increasingly on his own theories of art, which many of his friends could understand only with great difficulty.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 117

Related topics