Jean Cocteau Quotes

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm... Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

Creating music and just having someone's art directs the way you think about life subconsciously.

What's great about art is that if you can reach people, if they hear or see what you do and it moves them, there's a commonality.

I endeavor to make a picture, for instance, exert a positive influence on the observer by its coloring, mood, and compositional idea, encouraging, say, activation, tranquilization, concentration, or harmony.

Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts- it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure- and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music.

I think that music is still a mystery to most people. It kind of goes through most people without a specific thought. They feel the music, which is what's supposed to happen. They're not supposed to be curious about who wrote the music; they're supposed to feel what the show is trying to get them to feel. So if I help get that feeling across, that's good enough for me.

When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.

The direct effect on our mind is achieved by the words, the text, the thought, which arouse consideration. Our will is directly affected by the super-objective, by other objectives, by a through line of action. Our feelings are directly worked upon by tempo-rhythm.

It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

Look eye! Always look eye!

There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

There are various art forms we may or may not have talent for, may or may not have time for, and we may or may not be able to express ourselves in, but we ought to consider this fact-that whether we choose to be an environment or not, we are. We produce an environment other people have to live in. We should be conscious of the fact that this environment which we produce by our very 'being' can affect the people who live with us or work with us.

Man is apt to be more moved by the art of his own period, not because it is more perfect, but because it is organically related to him.

Art is something that happens inside us. We look at things in the world, and we become excited by them. We understand our own possibilities of becoming. And that's what art is.

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie. I say this as someone who would rather read comics than watch movies, listen to music, anything. But it's not an operatic medium. I hear other people talk about being moved to tears by comics. I can't imagine that.

Art must not be intelligent; art is a jouisance, an enjoyment

My favorite kind of music is the stuff that stops time. You put something on to sit there and let an experience go through you. To look at yourself clearly through a song. It's true of all art, all mediums, but for some reason music has a direct line straight into people.

These revelations expressed through Art work upon the soul with a force carrying its own conviction and permeate our sentient life with a sense of truth which logic and mere reason are powerless to combat.

I am seeing a resurgence of entertainment that not only entertains, but inspires, evokes, and moves. I am seeing strength in the ability of artistic expression to change our future.

If I could prescribe a single rule for looking at a work of art it would be to enjoy it. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit we enjoy our tears just as much as we enjoy our laughter. The only moments of life that are a bore are when we don't care one way or another.

Music bypasses the intellect, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you want to dance, makes you want to have sex.

If I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not so much the painting that excites me as that the painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation within me which return me to life more violently.