“The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderst...” — Jean Cocteau Quote

“The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”

“I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.”

“Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.”

“We insist on celebrating lone heroic path-finders, but even the most admired and the most successful inventors are part of a more remarkable supply chain of innovators who are largely ignored for the simpler mythology of one man or one eureka moment.”

“For me, it's not like I am going to look at the money the director's film has made before their film... For me, it is about working with the director whose work I have admired.”

“I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.”