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.
JEAN COCTEAUSince these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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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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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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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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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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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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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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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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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
JEAN COCTEAU