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
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we do not like?
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.
