Jean Cocteau Quotes

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

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

I'm a poet.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

My dad was a poet. He saw the world through unique glasses, with simplicity, spirituality, and humor.

There are so many avenues to explore and stories to tell. It's just about finding new ways of telling them.

Lyricism was placed into my head in Ireland.

We can understand poetry from a billion - in a billion styles, experiment, tradition, combination, spice, meter, image. It's all there for the poet and for the listener and for all of us.

For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

Keetje Kuipers' poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

Imagination is the hood ornament on your car of creativity.

I find inspiration in everything.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.