328 Quotes by Jean Cocteau

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.

If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

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

Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.