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 COCTEAUDo as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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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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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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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.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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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.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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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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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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Living is a horizontal fall.
JEAN COCTEAU