The Holy Terrors Quotes

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors

“A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors

“The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors

“She did not thank him. She was accustomed to miracles and accepted them as part of daily life. She expected them to happen, and they always did.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“Never, shrieked Paul, would he consent to meet the “filthy Jew”: he was coming along tomorrow at the appointed hour to slap his face.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors:

“Delicious was not a term applicable to anything below the crust of that volcano, whose heady vapors numbed his ravished senses.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors:

“This was more than death, it was the heart's death.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“Dreams resound sometimes with footsteps, mindless, purposeful, like hers; dreams lend us a gait lighter than winged flight, a step able to combine the statue's weight of inorganic marble with the subaqueous freedom of a deep-sea diver.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“Elisabeth would slip a coat on over her nightdress and sink down in a dream, one elbow on the table, her hand propping her cheek, in a pose reminiscent of some allegorical female figure, symbolizing Science, or Agriculture, or the Seasons. Paul lolled beside her, sketchily attired. They ate silently, like strolling players taking a rest between performances.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“It was then that the Room, like a great ship, put out to sea. Higher the waves, wider the horizons, rarer, more perilous, the cargo. In their strange world of childhood, of action in inaction, as in the waking dream of opium eaters, to stay becalmed could be as dangerous as to advance at breakneck speed.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“Thus, love had taught her to decipher the mysteries of childhood.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“The vanished mother is not mourned for long –once gone, never to return, from her accustomed place, her absence is accepted. And yet, by virtue of her one last freakish stroke, she was to manage, after all, to impress herself upon the memory of her children. Besides, the Room craved marvels. This death of hers, indubitably a marvel, made her a sarcophagus, a gothic monument, enshrined her in the Room; was duly to translate her into the eternity of dreams, into their magic heaven, with pride of place.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“Their heritage of instability, extravagant caprice, and natural elegance was their paternal portion.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“On went the cab, jogging through the open firmament. Stars came towards it, splintering the dim shower-whipped windows with fiery particles of light.”
― Jean Cocteau, Les enfants terribles

“All the same, persons who base their calculations on the inexorable pressure of the force of circumstance assume, correctly, that such lives are doomed.

The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies, but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heart-rending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors