Jean Cocteau

"True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing."

"Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly."

"What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end."

"The trouble about the Académie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed."

"What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies."

"Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images."

"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."

"There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul."

"That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist."

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."

"We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel."

"Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind."