Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
JEAN COCTEAUAfter 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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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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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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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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We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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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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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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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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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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Living is a horizontal fall.
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