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 COCTEAUWhat the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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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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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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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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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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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
JEAN COCTEAU