Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAUThe 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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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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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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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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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
JEAN COCTEAU