Jean Cocteau

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death.
-Jean Cocteau

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

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture. -Jean Cocteau

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
-Jean Cocteau

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

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
-Jean Cocteau

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.
-Jean Cocteau

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
-Jean Cocteau

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
-Jean Cocteau

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
-Jean Cocteau

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.
-Jean Cocteau