Quotes By Author: jean cocteau

“Success had put me on the wrong track and I did not know that there is a kind of success worse than failure, and a kind of failure worth all the success in the world. Neither did I know that the distant friendship of Rainer Maria Rilke would one day console me for having seen his lamp burn without knowing that it was signalling me to go and singe my wings against its flame.”

“Opium resembles religion insofar as a magician resembles Jesus.”

“The poet doesn’t invent. He listens. ”

“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”

“Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!”

“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.”

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”