I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAUMystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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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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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
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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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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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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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