I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAUHere I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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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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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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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 science in the flesh.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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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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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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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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Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
JEAN COCTEAU