I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAUAnd 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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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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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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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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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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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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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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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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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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