"I met a young man of nineteen or twenty, who at that time vibrated with all the youth of the world. This was Jean Cocteau, then a passionately imaginative youth to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundations of the Heavenly City."

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else — and failing."

"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."

"Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance."

"Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. This personal morality may appear to be immorality itself in the eyes of those who lie to themselves, or who live a life of confusion, in such a manner that, for them, a lie becomes the truth, and our truth becomes a lie..."

"Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground."

"Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?"

"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal... unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad."

"Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value."

"Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory..."

"The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery."

"Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known."

"Know that your work speaks only to those on the same wavelength as you."

"Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical."

"Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself."

"Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong."

"Hate only hatred."

"Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble."

"Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex."

"Do not close the circle. Leave it open. Descartes closes the circle. Pascal leaves it open. Rousseau's triumph over the encyclopedists is to have left his circle open when they closed theirs."

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

"Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous."

"Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities."

"Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends."

"He who is affected by an insult is infected by it."

"Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail."

"Be helpful, even if it compromises you."

"Find first, seek later."

"Hasten slowly. Run faster than beauty."

"One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet."

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

"Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection."

"People would say to Al Brown: "You are not a boxer. You are a dancer." He laughed at this, and won."

"Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally."

"Respect movements, flee schools."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system. … The craving for opium can be endured in a car."

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

"Life is a horizontal fall."

"Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo."

"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses."

"Mettez un lieu commun en place, nettoyez-le, frottez-le, éclairez-le de telle sorte qu'il frappe avec sa jeunesse et avec la même fraîcheur, le même jet qu'il avait à sa source, vous ferez œuvre de poète. Tout le reste est littérature."

"Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically."

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

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

"There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them."