Poetry is a religion with no hope.
JEAN COCTEAUYou’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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The joy of the young is to disobey.
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Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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Living is a horizontal fall.
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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.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
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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 have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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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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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
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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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You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
JEAN COCTEAU