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.
JEAN COCTEAUAn original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
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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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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
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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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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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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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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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The only way to kill death is through photography.
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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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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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