Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
JEAN COCTEAUThe poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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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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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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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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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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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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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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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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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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