The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
JEAN COCTEAUIf a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Art is science in the flesh.
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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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Living is a horizontal fall.
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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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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.
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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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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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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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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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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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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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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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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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