Jean Cocteau Quotes

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

Much of the time, we're transfixed by all of the ways we can reflect ourselves into the world. And we can barely find the time to reflect deeply back in on our own selves.

I don't know what other people are doing - I just know about me.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

I think it requires a bit of honesty, Swan Lake.

Years of standing in the limelight portraying other people for large amounts of money does not usually lead to a high degree of self-examination, let alone self-criticism.

Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

The question to everyone's answer is usually asked from within.

Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.

Don't be the rider who gallops all nightand never sees the horse that is beneath him

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act.

You have to self-reflect. If you forget who you actually are, then what's the use of even looking in the mirror.

She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.

And truly, O man, if you concentrate hard on the state you are in it will be surprising if you have time for anything else.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

It takes time to understand yourself, to go inside yourself and to question yourself and really take yourself to task. That's self-expression.

Golf is the only-est sport. You're completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man's performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.

I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker.

I wish I could say confidently that pacing remains my weak point, if you could talk about your own stuff without sounding like you're self-obsessed. But I think you kind of have to be.

Become aware of what is in you. Announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.

Perhaps a child, like a cat, is so much inside of himself that he does not see himself in the mirror.