The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
JEAN COCTEAUSince the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
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I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
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The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
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Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
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My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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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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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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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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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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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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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAU