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.
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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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
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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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It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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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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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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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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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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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.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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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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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
JEAN COCTEAU