Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
JEAN COCTEAUTact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.
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If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
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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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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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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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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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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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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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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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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
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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 COCTEAU