Quote

The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.

Jean Cocteau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jean Cocteau
Age: 74 †
Born: 1889
Born: July 5
Died: 1963
Died: October 11
Actor
Composer
Designer
Film Director
Illustrator
Librettist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Playwright
Poet
Postage Stamp Designer
Prosaist
Clément Eugène Jean Pierre Cocteau
Zhan Kokto
Eugène Jean Maurice Cocteau
Eugene Jean Maurice Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Black
Failed
Violent
Laughter
Laugh
Expect
Silence
Almost
Bursts
Audience
Tragic

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

Image
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
Jean Cocteau
Image
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
Jean Cocteau
Image
one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started
Jean Cocteau
Image
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Jean Cocteau
Image
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
Jean Cocteau
Image
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.
Jean Cocteau
Image
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Jean Cocteau
Image
The cinema is death at work.
Jean Cocteau
Image
I am burning myself up and will always do so.
Jean Cocteau
Image
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Jean Cocteau