Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
JEAN COCTEAUTact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
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When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
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I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.
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After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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The joy of the young is to disobey.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
JEAN COCTEAU