I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.
Jean Cocteau

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
Jean Cocteau

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.
Jean Cocteau

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau

Life is a horizontal fall.
Jean Cocteau

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

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.
Jean Cocteau

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
Jean Cocteau

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Jean Cocteau

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Jean Cocteau

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Jean Cocteau

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
Jean Cocteau

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

The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Jean Cocteau