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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

Jean Cocteau

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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Difference Follow Myself Road Room
And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
JEAN COCTEAU

Acceptance Confession Happiness Hate Quite Secret Simplicity Try Understand
It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
JEAN COCTEAU

Believe Deep Religious Spirit
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAU

Call Limitation Public Wisdom
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Eyes Live
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
JEAN COCTEAU

Choice Death Kill Option Save Torture
My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
JEAN COCTEAU

Drive Myself Name Poetry Simplicity Wait
Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
JEAN COCTEAU

Myself Poetry Reason
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Action Appearance Youth
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAU

Complication Simplicity Style Way
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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Beautiful Fashion Hands Production Time Ugly
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 COCTEAU

Appearance Better Delicate Discover Force Lose Yourself
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Artist Bad Fame Give Up Reward Success
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 COCTEAU

Light Ourselves Poetry Record Role Strict Surprise Word
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
JEAN COCTEAU

Control Feeling Myself
The only way to kill death is through photography.
JEAN COCTEAU

Camera Death Kill Photography Way
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Copy Job Order Original
The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Drugs Ghost Home
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Lying Preference Reality
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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Dog Hope Performance Poetry Religion Service Training
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
JEAN COCTEAU

Beginning Born Death Deep Life Myself Perspective Rush Walk
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
JEAN COCTEAU

Himself Reading Stupidity
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAU

Audacity Far Journey Yourself
Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
JEAN COCTEAU

Beautiful Myself See Talk Woman
French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
JEAN COCTEAU

Attitude Bad Identity Mood People Personality
The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
JEAN COCTEAU

Creation Force Himself Language Live Manipulation People Poem Poet Understand
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
JEAN COCTEAU

Children Mad Patience Poet Try

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

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