I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
JEAN COCTEAUPoetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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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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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
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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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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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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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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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The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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Art is science in the flesh.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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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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